Poetry Tyneside

Snow

2012-02-14T11:21:00.003Z

Threnody of snow through cables

Slung as monstrous garrottes between

Hunch-shouldered and nethered pylons,

Earth becoming silenced beneath

Fleecy quilting, embroided with

Tyre tread threads along seamless roads.

Urgent dashes of council grit

Sprayed like civic sick spewed across

Otherwise sober pavements. Youths

Drift in and out a cone of light

Yellow as dog-piss beneath soft

Street lamp. A cold confetti spills

Over them, a celebration

Of their mutual vow of life.

They giggle at swaddled oldies

Trudging by, huddled and hapless,

Oblivious that a sowing

Of snow is also a reaping

And how, without exception, each

Flake has its own unique bouquet,

Easily missed in a blizzard.

Dave Alton

Train Lovers

2012-02-07T21:11:00.000Z

Maris O'Rourke, a New Zealander, has been writing poetry for four years. She has published in Takahç, Poetry New Zealand, Bravado, Shot Glass Journal (USA), International Literary Quarterly (UK) and Side Stream. She was the inaugural featured poet in the NZPS's (New Zealand Poetry Society) 'a fine line'. In 2010 she was runner-up in the Auckland NZSA (New Zealand Society of Authors) Sonnet competition and awarded an NZSA mentorship. In 2011 she was Second in the Robert Burns Poetry Competition; awarded Highly Commended in the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize; and First place in the South Island Writers Association (SIWA) National Competition

I blame Mr Foster.
Eager eight year olds
we ran to his classes anticipating
unknown journeys to come.

Unruly spirals of red hair.
Dashing matching moustache
from his World War II pilot days.
Slow smile starting from his smoky grey eyes.
He was easily diverted, especially in Maths,
with a question about trains.

He’d pull out the maps.
Trace tracks with his finger.
Sing the names.
Like music.
Like poetry.

We racketed up alongside the Nile
on slatted wooden seats
to the end of the line at Aswan.
Sailed slowly back on a red-sailed felucca
a huge Nubian at the helm
in a white galabiyya.

Entranced.
Enchanted.
We hung on every word
of all the things he’d done and seen.

We rocked along the wide-gauge Trans-Siberian railway
in Edwardian splendour
all the way to Vladivostock.
Pulling back red velvet curtains to see
Cossacks galloping across
the great steppes on wild horses.

Escapes conjured up nightly
on bombing raids to Berlin.
Like smoke.
Like dreams.

FOOTBALL DIARY - MORE FROM THE ARCHIVE!

2012-02-04T14:54:00.000Z

Verse too

While most Newcastle fans will no doubt go drinking after Wednesdays's Champions League tie at PSV Eindhoven, Keith Armstrong, will go to a poetry reading.

The 51-year-old poet and Toon nut will be performing his own works in an all night cafe in Eindhoven, with topics ranging from Jackie Milburn to Hughie Gallacher. Goodness knows how they will go down if Newcastle win.

Keith was invited to perform by the Dutch poet Bart FM Droog, whom he met while visiting the Cuckoo Club in Groningen, Newcastle's twin town. So, when PSV play in Newcastle on November 5, Keith has invited Bart and three other performers, including a didgeridoo player, to do their stuff at a poetry reading in Newcastle.

Hopefully Bart will find a quiet place to stay. For when Keith and his fellow poet Ian Horn slept on the floor of Bart's squat, the avid Magpie got in a flap during the night. Recalls Keith: "We were woken up by three budgies mating in a cage in a corner."

(Martin Thorpe, The Guardian, (UK), 18-10-97)

from the archive: poetry meets jazz

2012-02-04T14:10:00.001Z

LAUNCH OF A UNIQUE POETRY & JAZZ COLLABORATION

FEATURING:

THE NEW SAFE SEXTET

WITH NORTH EAST POETS:

KEITH ARMSTRONG, JOHN EARL , IAN HORN , MICHAEL STANDEN.

SPECIAL GUESTS: JACKIE KAY, FRANK MESSINA.

BRIDGE HOTEL, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE , THURSDAY 5TH DECEMBER 2002.

THE BAND:

Trumpet Don Forbes

Tenor Saxophone John Rowland

Alto Saxophone Paul Gowland

Baritone Saxophone Danny Veitch

Guitar Andy Pattinson

Bass Guitar Stuart Davies

Piano Alan Laws

Percussion Dave Francis

POETRY & MUSIC SET:

1. ‘Because I Drink Too Much’ by Keith Armstrong; music composed by Don Forbes, using ‘Bah Lues For U’s’.

2. ‘Afternoon In Amsterdam Bar’ by Ian Horn; music ‘Little Blue Eyes’ composed by Don Forbes.

3. ‘Sugar Daddy’ by Ian Horn; music composed by Don Forbes.

4. ‘The Poet Of Rain’ by John Earl; music composed by Don Forbes.

5. ‘Drips’ by Michael Standen; music ‘Rollano’ composed by Juan Lazaro Menadas.

6. ‘New Idea’ by Michael Standen; music composed by Don Forbes.

7. ‘The 8.5 Brought Us Ears And Feet’ by John Earl; music ‘Mark Time’ composed by Kenny Wheeler.

8. ‘Lockerbie’ by Keith Armstrong; music composed by Don Forbes.

"Still the Sea Rolls On" at the Mining Institute

2012-02-03T21:41:00.005Z

On Thursday 26^th January, the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers hosted a book launch. The publication, "Still the Sea Rolls On", has been compiled and edited by Keith Armstrong and Peter Dixon. The sub-title, "The Hartley Pit Calamity of 1862", explains why the Institute’s Neville Hall was such an appropriate venue.

The book explores the history of the tragedy and marks its 150^th anniversary with poems, photographs and illustrations. The poems range from Joseph Skipsey’s, "The Hartley Calamity" written and read by him to raise funds for the bereaved families, to reflections written by poets of today.

With the disappearance of coal mining none of today’s writers have direct experience of the industry, although many can claim close family connections. My own father worked down the pit on the South Yorkshire coalfield during World War 2 as a Bevan Boy.

So this was no academic historical exercise for the contributors, and a common theme of the evening was community. Rather than that artificial construct, "The Big Society", the Hartley Calamity was a true expression of people coming together for mutual aid and support. The socialism of disaster, the best of people brought out by the worst of circumstances, rather than the social disaster presently being perpetrated by the Coalition government.

The book is itself the product of collaboration, as was the evening that launched it. A well informed and informative lecture on The Hartley Disaster preceded the well attended reading. The evening was enlivened by an eclectic mix of songs accompanied by both acoustic and electric guitars, along with the soulful music of the Northumbrian pipes.

Overall, this was a fitting tribute and memorial, even down to the day of the week. As Joseph Skipsey wrote:
"Twas on the Thursday morning, on

The first month of the year,

When there befell the thing that well

May rend the heart to hear."

Dave Alton

A recent visit by the New Zealand poet Janis Freegard included a meeting with Tyneside poets Keith Armstrong and Dave Alton. This is part of a developing association with the New Zealand Poetry Society.

2012-01-20T11:18:00.002Z

Janis Freegard was born in South Shields, England, but has lived in New Zealand most of her life. Her poetry has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Poetry NZ, The North (UK), Turbine, Glottis, JAAM, Rain Dog (UK) and Surface Online. She also writes short fiction and won the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award in 2001. She lives in Wellington.

The following poems are taken from http://www.nzpoetsonline.homestead.com/

Spiderhouse

spiders determinedly

delicately

shroud the walls

this one must surely be a leaf

that one has wrapped mosquitoes

all along the clothesline

they wait on the porch

how much of your

spider quota

might you have eaten now –

the ones that crawl

into your mouth

when you’re sleeping?

Turtles

Some things aren’t meant to be understood:

Like electricity or war

You know they’re going on somewhere

But it’s best not to think about it

It could make your hair curl

Ann explains the turtle theory of light:

Behaving neither like a wave nor a particle

Light is more like a great string of turtles

Each holding the next one’s tail in its mouth

Like the pin in a grenade

What they do when they get to a light switch is

Anybody’s guess

The Slattern

She hasn’t driven her vacuum cleaner around the rooms;

the dust sits thick.

Piled up dishes will be taken care of soon.

Hillocks of washing swell and lie in ambush;

windows are opaque with grime;

the fridge’s fruiting moulds are eager to be let loose.

Newspaper castles yellow in the sunny afternoons;

the bottle stack threatens;

a compost bucket barely contains its ooze.

Blue emerges from an ancient plastic tube

atop a slimy sink.

The slattern sings. Loudly and out of tune.

Trichotillomania

she plucks out

each eyebrow hair

one by one

with platinum tweezers

and stands them up

on the black lacquer dressing table:

her row of soldiers

first line of defence

above them, framed

in the oblong mirror:

her deforested forehead

wondering eyes

inconsequential nose

the fleshy lips protected

by a layer of down

(now that would have to go)

her smooth neck

her far too animal body

POETRY TYNESIDE MEETS POETRY NEW ZEALAND IN NEWCASTLE

2012-01-18T22:22:00.002Z

left to right: dave alton, keith armstrong, janis freegard, peter clayworth
photo: peter dixon

POETRY TYNESIDE LINKS WITH POETRY NEW ZEALAND

2011-12-29T11:19:00.008Z

"She Quakes" is the first contribution in what is intended to be a fruitful link with the New Zealand Poetry Society. This poem is particularly poignant as Tynebard was in Christchurch in December 2010 during the series of earthquakes, two more significant ones of which struck there recently.

SHE QUAKES

Earth groans,

her trembling begins,

her tectonic plates shift.

Ground cracks and leaps,

burping sludge bubbles upwards,

locked energy, released in a noisy belch.

Her movement, restrained for centuries,

escapes, in a series of sideway jolts,

stretching her reach, testing her strength,

- she quakes.

On her surface, green and warm,

above her inner heat and energy,

small creatures scatter.

Constructions

                            collapse

                    topple

            and pancake

to the ground.

The creatures are crushed,

cut and burnt.

Gases escape and ignite.

Rivers seek new paths,

waste and water break free.

Blocks of stone fall from

where man has put them:

heaped on her surface,

broken, disorderly.

Bells of iron shout as they fall.

Still stretching and moving,

she continues to quake,

seeking a new position to rest in.

Deryn Pittar (deryn@xtra.co.nz)

FROM THE ARCHIVE: INDIAN POETRY WITH THE TYNESIDE POETS

2011-12-27T17:01:00.002Z

DIARY DATES

2011-12-25T11:13:00.001Z

The North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers, Neville Hall, Westgate

Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1SE. Tel: 0191 232 2201.

DIARY DATES – NOT TO BE MISSED

THURSDAY 26 JANUARY 2012

THE NEW HARTLEY COLLIERY DISASTER

To commemorate the anniversary of the 1862 disaster a programme of events are planned in the area. Norman Jackson’s talk at the Institute on Thursday 26th January will be supplemented by poems and music, the programme for the evening is:

5:30pm Tea and Coffee in the Library.

6:00pm Lecture by Norman Jackson.

6:40pm Questions.

Adjourn to the Library. Buffet and drinks.

7:00pm Launch of a new book about the Hartley Calamity, edited by Keith Armstrong and published by Northern Voices Community Projects with the support of North Tyneside Council.

Keith Armstrong, Catherine Graham and others will read poems and stories from the new book including Joseph Skipsey's Hartley ballad, with singer/songwriter Gary Miller performing Keith’s Hartley lyric and other mining songs and piper Chris Ormston performing his Lament for Hartley and other appropriate tunes.

Copies of the book will be available for sale during the event.

8:30/9:00 close.

COMMEMORATIONS IN MEMORY OF THE MINERS WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN THE NEW HARTLEY PIT DISASTER INCLUDE:

14 January 2012: New Hartley Memorial Hall,

Beeswing in concert. Also featuring Keith Armstrong.

15 January 2012: 11am, Memorial Service at St. Alban's Church.

15 January 2012: 4pm, Memorial Service at New Hartley Memorial Hall accompanied by Ellington Brass Band. The new Memorial Banner will be unveiled.

15 January 2012: 7.30 – 9.30pm Whitley Bay Playhouse, a concert by the Grimethorpe Brass Band.

16 January 2012: 11am, A short memorial service will be held at the New Hartley pit head in the memorial garden.

JOSEPH SKIPSEY – A COMMEMORATION

Saturday 17th March from 7 – 9pm in the Library.

2012 provides several anniversaries of mining disasters so, to re-balance this a little, we’ll be holding an event celebrating the 180th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Skipsey, the Tyneside Pitman Poet.

The event includes Keith Armstrong, Gary Miller(Whisky Priests) and pipe player Chris Ormston, with readings from Skipsey’s poetry and an account of his life.

During the evening, the annual Northern Voices Joseph Skipsey Award will be presented to a deserving local writer.

GREY’S MONUMENT

2011-12-18T08:25:00.003Z

Grey –

this man and his brain’s conception,

clasped in stone.

Disdainful figure

raised

on a firm dry finger;

proud-stiff

above a time-bent avenue of dwindling lights.

The Earl’s pale forehead is cool and cloudy;

unblinking,

he views us all (as we view him)

in the same old, cold, way –

through the wrong end of a battered telescope,

through the dusty lens of history.

Strip away the tinsel

And this city’s heart is stone.

Keith Armstrong

Night Watch

2011-12-08T16:54:00.000Z

Town of a thousand holes, at the bottom

Of each a dark boggart lurks cunningly

Creating mischief for careless souls who’re

Simply passing. Urban plastic tendrils

Squirm, coil and wrap around the bed ridden

Riding alive through comatose dreaming.

All the while, tower blocks round and about,

Facades irritated by rashes of light

Wind is scratching, rain hardly soothing,

Pluck up their concrete roots and, like golems,

Lurch along through pedestrian precincts,

Passed shops and stores blinded by steel shutters

Billed with vainglorious posters proclaiming

Imminent revolution, this week’s sales,

Or the immanence of God and the end

Of Days. Even as ungainly tower blocks

Retreat beyond traffic lights, boggarts

Emerge from excavations flimsily

Fenced round with barbers’ poles, in such a way

Shadows might ease free from corporeal

Bodies responsible for casting them.

Night is the product of curtains being drawn

Against streets that have to be abandoned

To darkness, light so selfishly horded

In living rooms, in the eyes of voyeurs

Who do not realise televisions

Are vampires that exist by sucking life-time

From their fascinated victims. Too late

They switch off, for it’s bed time, deathbed time.

The night watch is running slow, leaden hands

Weighing every heavy second, holding

Each one just too long, making the minutes

Fall behind the clock. A hospital cot

Easily contains these remains of a man,

So little of him left, his shadow gone.

Even breath can be no longer his own,

Generous town sharing its air with him

Via one of those serpentine urban tendrils

Worming its way through the wall to his nostrils.

Hardly a burden with so little left

Him to draw from his account. Family

Come and sit and sit and go in relays

Of concern, keeping his lips barely moist

With final kisses and cool water soaked

Into pink sponge swabs on thin lollysticks

Looking like unspun candyfloss. Night watch

Knits or reads or plugs into World Service

While drowsing on the one comfy armchair.

For all that time is tardy dawn still comes,

Shift changes, while night and day will remain

All the same to him even as tower blocks

Step back into place, boggarts burrow back

Into earth and the curtains are drawn back,

Back and back, releasing light from their rooms

To illuminate awakening streets

And the living realising they are so.

Dave Alton

SUN OVER ST. JAMES' PARK

2011-11-26T14:42:00.001Z

Sun sets on Empire,

a football sinking in the sky.

Dreams are gone,

the kicks we had.

I see their ghosts in The Strawberry night:

Len White and George Eastham,

Gordon Hughes and Liam Tuohy,

Alf McMichael, Jimmy Scoular.

Roaring Boys of one hue or another:

Alan Suddick and Jim Smith,

John McGrath and Dick Keith,

Dave Hilley and Andy Penman.

Stalwart lads from an industrial past,

hold on to those memories.

Golden Balls of light

shine on the surface of The Tyne,

ripple in the mind.

Great times were had

and peanuts tanner a bag.

Swaying lads on the Popular Side,

Oxo down our throats.

Chuck us a cup,

we're thirsty.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

from 'true faith' the newcastle united fanzine for which keith armstrong has been poet-in-residence

PHOTOS: TONY WHITTLE

Piano

2011-11-22T14:19:00.001Z

When Gagarin finally opened his eyes

He saw what Ptolemy saw, it was just

An issue of precedence it appeared.

And had that thin flare rocketed him out

At the speed of light, then all there ever was,

All there’ll ever be, played in the same instant.

"If you look in the heavens for heaven,”

Jesus might have said to Didymos Judas,

“Don’t expect there to be a single star.”

But of all the spheres there is only this one

Where there is music, even if others

Are not silent they haven’t yet been tuned.

Sitting in his chair bolstered on false feet

The old pianist looks out through slatted blinds

At a melody of autumnal stars.

Too soon, as it always is and will be,

Curtains are drawn, pricks of light excluded,

And a whole life passes in a moment.

When it comes to being launched into space

Eyes shut as a reflex. Meanwhile, on earth,

A fine piano stands with its lid closed.

Dave Alton

More from the archives of Poetry North East

2011-11-18T09:02:00.000Z

Tolstoy's brother plants a green stick in the estate at Yasnaya Polyana.
It has happened before.

The woods at Yasnaya Polyana.

Eyeless leaves
rustle their neighbour's faces. Sough,
Sough. The wind. Tolstoy's brother
plants his green stick.

'If ever you find
this carved secret. Earth
will have greened a Paradise.'

Green, green.

Black men, abiding their wilderness,
scorch the defoliated, wriggling grub.

Whitely the ferry chunters us
between bays. In oiled dispersions
of wateriness we sprinkle to our rest.

The cut religious stick fades
among first plantantions. Wind heaves.
Wordlessly, it vanished, bearing
what the hand gave, of brief warmth.

O supple Paradise. Integument
prime as our mother's breats
folding milk.

The pouched marsupial intelligence,
its care, its teeth, stained with grass,
its leap to the peaceable knigdom, that,
that and no other thing, where is it?

The greening of a cut, wordless
Australasian stick. Wind lifts
like a huge leaf. Lovely questions
folitate the Pacific.

Sydney 1974

Jon Silkin

Four Poems from the Archives of Poetry North East

2011-10-20T09:07:00.004+01:00

Your Words

your words like echoes across an empty carpark,

torturing the trees that made us sleep,

     lost pines, scenting the evening

     falling secrets from your wet mouth.

your words like small whips against my back,

swaying in the dead music,

     a harmony of sour wine,

     shines, and stands up to boast.

your words like raindrops against cracked windows,

seeping quietly through my loud skull,

     the virgin and the widow within

     can only tell me of love.

your words like marching ghosts from their graves,

tearing hearts with invisible hands

     a clash of dark weapons beneath the sand,

     the smile vanishing quickly into space.

your words come and go like passing ships,

slotting into violent grey seascapes,

     impossible pathways, twisting back the head

     to see the last movement of lips.

your words

your words will live forever

     as soon as I see what you say.

                                        Paul Harland

Sunset In Chopwell Woods

The sun is balanced on the straight edge

Of a distant hill;

A filmed dancer in tip-toe pose

She collapses into herself

With slow serenity

Like a moving picture

Whose projection has slowed.

And last left

Is a curved lip of light

And the afterflow

When the audience flows

With delight to applaud

And the curtains close

On a perfect show.

                                        Wendy Zoula

Visitation (Leazes Park)

In the early chapter of a mid-winter’s day

only the bird-choirs erase

the stillness of trees.

Something moves and you consider.

With this existence evolves the judgement

of thought

after the acceptance of memory.

                                        Gordon Phillips

Demolition of Sunderland Town Hall

Such a building as you were

Demands an epitaph

As much as sealed copies of The Times,

Sovereigns and musty ideas of the future

They launched you with a century ago.

Your citizens won’t miss you,

Though you were their Hall,

To a stranger – well

It happens all the time.

Another hotel? What the hell,

We live in suitcases,

Who needs pillars?

The bells hanging from the end of a crane

Toll surprisingly deep, rhythmic, unnoticed.

                                        Michael Standen

Redevelopment

Like Wellsian War-machines

The cranes occupy Newcastle,

Dribbling buildings ugly as money

Across this reluctantly human town.

                                        Michael Standen

2011-10-19T22:07:00.002+01:00

RETURN TO CHERRYBURN -THE LIFE AND WORK OF THOMAS BEWICK (1753-1828) POEMS BY THE TYNESIDE POETS

2011-10-18T14:17:00.002+01:00

FOR THOMAS BEWICK

In your precious art you are raised

delicate species fresh, alive

with every searching niche of blade,

on metalled tints of bone

in flesh, conceived.

Today, our clear eye can review

that aggregate of animals

and spreading plants which grew;

now your thoughts to Cherryburn

are our adoption.

Through sludge of field flung back

from my drag of parting feet,

crossing matted rural lands

you swept in light and shade,

a lock of trees

inside a border to engrave.

Gordon Phillips

CHERRYBURN

Time, eater of men and stones and landscapes,

Scarcely turns in some places. The wheel’s silence

Is held, palpable, among darkened hills.

Trees etched in black against held dusk:

No birds. No sounds; as once and now are one,

Identical, as here at Cherryburn.

We reach the house slated and washed by change.

The stench of dung and fodder under the oak beams

That rib the darkness, echo what we mean:

There is a point where time, itself extinguished,

Remembers, being darkened, what it is.

There is a point where man stops the Dark Wheel

Fixes, outside of time, a detail seem;

And this being done, years past, at Cherryburn

Figures a frail persistency in Man.

We question it, we call in question much

Eaten by fire, unscorched; the hidden hand

That makes a wall of waters where we pass.

As men have always done, against a sky of brass,

We cry aloud, and doubt it even as we touch

Beyond the real, Impalpable Reality.

Time, eater of stones and men, and all built

Up, is broken on a silence here. It rests.

Perhaps there are such places, given us

That we may see, over dark piled-up cloud

An earlier moment: candlelight of dusk;

Man’s lucid mind under astonished glass.

Alan C. Brown

THE HARE

The hare cried

when I took it in my arms…

before the farmer

broke its leg

and flung it back

to face his dogs again…….

And so this hare’s

engraved in memory

preserved forever running

and forever running free.

Eleanor Makepeace

THE ANGLER

Shielded from the world

In a shrine of foliage,
The angler knots his concentration.
Intruders sense their trespass,
Retreat unseen in silent awe.
While Nature breathes in sympathy
Entirely at one with this bowed figure
Whose inward, intent thoughts
Only a Son of hers
Could so skilfully display
In fulsome, rounded lines
That draw us in to his furrowed brow
And feel the pain of this intensity.

Helen M. Pickles

A STAG

Staring proudly back
with as fine an eye
As cast you there;
Caught, but not snared;
Imprisoned, but unbridled;
Your vibrancy channelled
In delicate lines,
A fleeting stance
So carelessly struck –
As forgotten by you
As the morning’s scent –
Now timelessly etched;
A life preserved
Though long since lost.

Helen M. Pickles

BIRDS

The random rush of nature posed

for your delicate instruments to compose

symphonies of rooks and owls and blackbirds;

a choral work as soft as still words

over which the Mute Swan glides,

floating into place, ruffled only by

the last deft cut that froze –

sharp image of an eagle’s savage claws.

Subtle hands plucked a feather

and drew its weight

exactly across a plate,

impressing down upon a page forever:

Thomas Bewick, crakes or crowns,

complex nature, simply posed.

Dave Alton

WAITING FOR DEATH

(Thomas Bewick’s last work)

This last almost immortal now

his weak eyes plucked from time

four iron hooves almost afloat

the ribs’ thin cry what else?

A boxwood landscape cut with rain

Steeple and farm stones the blemished oak

- traces and leather trappings peel the skin

- only a horse? What is, what might have been?

With brown silk cap and scalded skull he leans

over a world turned out become the pain

each of us feels under dark threat, or worse.

Lastly a grim unyielding poise breaks through

His knife opens a mystery and stilled

the balance of his mind takes all men in.

Alan C. Brown

FIVE POEMS by Keith Armstrong

AMEN CORNER

(in memory of Thomas Bewick, wood engraver)

The starlings en masse

roost here now.

They blend with the dark trees

in the twilight

by Bewick's shadowy workshop.

Under the Cathedral spire,

they shriek and gossip

in the chill;
chit-chat of more weather.

I think that Thomas
you could speak to birds,
knew them as you drew their words
in woodblocks.
You coaxed them from their very eggs,
uncaged them -
let them sing on the page.

THE BROTHERLY SOCIETY

London

Depressed you

with its ‘blackguard places’,

its streetwalking ways.

They called you ‘Scotchman’

and you itched for home,

reading the Geordie papers

at the Hole-in-the-Wall.

And your heart trilled like a blackbird’s

when you rejoined your Whig mates,

putting a world to rights

in the Lion Lounge.

You were back

herding sheep in your roots,

smiling down to your boots

in that Brotherly Society

of Northumbrian cronies:

the wild fields

of Tyne.

RETURN TO CHERRYBURN

Drawing

clear of the city,

you carved your name

in dogs barks

and birds cries.

Your infant eyes

kept seeing

the devils in bushes

and the gods

in thrushes.

You loved

to scratch a living.

Avoiding the faces

of strange places,

You dreamed of always

Being a boy,

A bird or a fish,

Awash in the light

Of a dark wood:

A cherry burn.

Footprints home

To remember.

‘TALE PIECES’

You spent your life

perfecting it,

crafty as a fox

forging a frantic path

across the fields.

To the sound of the Pipes,

you worked your way

to a quiet glade,

died contentedly

devising

‘tale-pieces’:

a tuneful ending

to a drawn-in-day.

WALK ON, TOM BEWICK

Stride Circus Lane

and chip your signature

on the pavement of scrapes and kisses.

pass the Forth

and skirt

its pleasure gardens;

throw your darts in the archery field.

skim the bowling green

and walk on water,

doff your hat to Mrs Waldie;

cut along

old scars of lanes

to the bloody gush of Westgate street;

whistle with birds

in a vicar’s garden,

let warm thoughts fly in Tyneside sun

to bless this Geordie day.

And greet

the morning hours,

Aunt Blackett and Gilbert Gray,

sing to free the world,

the Black Boy;

harmonise your mind

in a churchyard of melancholy.

Dance over the Lort Burn,

in the sun in your eyes,

flooding your workshop

with a light fantastic.

Your shoulders so proud

rub with the building girls

and lady barbers

along Sandhill;

the boats of your dreams

bridge the aching Tyne,

ships groaning

in the tender daylight,

longing for the healing moon;

a keelman’s fantasies

of quayside flesh

and the seething sea.

You trip along

searching for electricity and magnetism

in the inns,

winging it

with the bird catchers and canary breeders,

the dirty colliers and the harping whalers.

Walk on Tom,

execute

a portrait

of a hanging man;

let your strong heart

swell with the complex passion

of common folk.

BYKER HILL

2011-10-13T17:17:00.002+01:00

Poems by Keith Armstrong

FIRST PUBLISHED BY IRD ARTS CLUB 1972

byker

antique mart of memory’s remnants

glad bag of fading rags

bedraggled old flag

blowing in the wind over newcastle

we stand on street corners shivering in the winter

like birds sheltering from the wind

we do not rattle loose change in our pockets

only the nuts and bolts of poverty

we are splinters

ill-shaven

our clothes droop on us

using our bones for hangers

we avoid mirrors and images of ourselves in shields road doorways

we do not look through windows

we draw curtains of beer across our eyes

we sleep/place bets

every week on dole day hunger prods us awake

it is instinct

it is a fear of never waking

yesterday’s records in a raby street window

yesterday’s news

revolving today

pictures of byker trapped in a camera

yesterday’s photos

developed today

yesterday’s headlines

today’s wrapping paper

yesterday’s wars are bloodless today

snot drips nose

wailing ragman drags a foot

and sniffs

any old rags

hair like straw

homespun

snot runs

licks cracked mouth

any old rags

as raby street

declines

into

water

any old rags

watson’s toffee factory

wrapped in mist

melts in the watering mouth of the dawn

another byker child is born

another byker son assumes

the dusty jacket of a byker man

and this is the truth

the wind-ripped reality between the grave and the womb

the aimlessness

the weary broken people

shuffling through the measured lines of architects’ reports

the cripples

the dying streets

behind the brash and snatching shops

the coughing strays

this is all the small print

the drifting words

beneath the glossy covers

and this is mother byker now

a wasteland of schools

churches public houses

a frail old woman

her mouth and eyes bricked over

tilting

on her last legs

change

creeps like a lizard over the face of byker

dragging behind it its retinue of planners

wreckers

builders and

visionaries

tomorrow

you will wake from your years of sleeping

and find what you knew to be yours being hauled away

over byker bridge on the backs of lorries

your yesterday

in clouds of dust

byker folk are living still

byker folk on byker hill

fading flowers on a window sill

byker folk

hang

Returning to the Sea

2011-10-04T11:16:00.003+01:00

Lounge seems such an inappropriate word

Even though he sits there quietly,

Bolstered by cushions,

Idle hands folded casually in his lap,

Eyelids drooping.

The world outside is sliced into thin strips

By a Venetian blind

That’s probably dusty because they always are

And the dust will be him,

Slowly flaking away his four score and five.

There’s barely a sliver of him remaining.

Am I looking into a scrying mirror

Foreshadowing my own future?

I know I should be recording his history

Before he’s engulfed by it,

Making a record to give voice

To those albums of snaps I’ll be left with,

Illusions in monochrome and paling colour,

As if time

Could be developed at an optimum moment

And fixed.

Over Pendle, that whale of a hill,

An ocean of dark cloud swims before the wind,

Our present sunshine,

Colloped into long thin ingots of light pyrites,

Is too glittery to last.

Rain, when it arrives, will be unwelcome,

He’s already drowning

From internal springs which wont be staunched,

Bronchials barely coping with the flash-flood,

Bloated legs mocking emaciation,

And weeping pores.

Years must weigh heavily

To result in such weariness as this,

To press his world inwards,

Downwards,

To hobble him

So he shuffles between easy chair and dining chair

And bed.

Such, these days, is the geography of his life.

Just a room away a silent piano,

Old scores laid to rest,

Bass drone of the dehumidifier

Sucking the last of his fluid playing from the air.

All those composers he tended to so passionately

Are long dead

Even to him now.

Finally, all music must end in silence,

Whether the last note is emphatic

Or pianissimo,

The performance draws to a close.

He doesn’t even listen anymore,

A library of CDs

Mute in their sleeves as blanks.

Rain arrives

Pebble dashing the picture window

Bars of the blind giving an impression of security.

With stoic deliberation

He lifts his lids,

Turns to stare out,

Draws an arid breath across sandpaper

And, in a near whisper strained through a pillow, says,

“Looks bleak, doesn’t it.”

Words are feathers catching in his throat

Inducing a spasm of coughing

Which might just shake loose every bone in his body

From its flimsy fixings.

There is no freedom of speech anymore,

Not under this regime.

Newspaper still folded,

Too weighty with world events for him to lift;

It will be slipped neatly into the magazine rack

A daily countdown

No one seems able to cancel,

Not while he still occupies, however slightly,

The absence forming in his chair.

I pick up the paper and read it,

I can at least do this for him

Or myself,

Suspending my disbelief.

Also, I can look out at the slatted weather

Seeing he’s slipped into a doze again,

And, I admit,

Glance to check his thin chest still has a rhythm to it.

Cloud, shattering against unyielding glass, is running,

Via gutters and channels,

Back towards the undifferentiated sea.

There is a shallow beat to his chest

And his eyes prise themselves open

To look once again

Out into the drenching gloom.

“Yes dad,” I say nonchalantly, “It does look bleak.”

Dave Alton

Grainger Market 1970

2011-09-25T15:17:00.000+01:00

Cold red meat laid to rest
on white marble slabs.

Stinking cheeses
and farm fresh eggs.

Flowers for all occasions:
Red roses, white lillies.

Naval oranges
and golden delicious.

Mouth-watering music
from the records stand.

Catherine Graham

A PORTRAIT OF THE GRAINGER MARKET BY THE TYNESIDE POETS - FROM 1973

2011-09-23T09:38:00.004+01:00

this is life
the gloss and the flesh

weigh-house of passion and flame

you can get lost in this market’s amazement

but you can never lose yourself

sometimes

a sleep-walk in these grazing crowds

can feel like a stroll through your brain

Keith Armstrong

A city

within a city

light cage

bazaar and blind

these swollen alleys

flow with a teeming life’s blood

Geordie !

Swim for your life !

Keith Armstrong

ODE TO THE GRAINGER MARKET

You, Grainger Market, aged Patriarch,

Quaint backdrop of our childhhod’s crazy dawn.

Edwardian giantess; stiff, grounded Angel.

From Nun Street, still, your steel-webbed dentures gleam.

Uplifted shop-flanked avenue, curved arches,

Our fathers and grandfathers here were green.

The cool, invidious housewife with crooked elbows

Takes pleasure home in bags. Years melt between.

Butchers, optician, chemist, haberdashers;

The cleaver’s clang, the swish of brush or broom;

The General Weigh-house – favourite of grandmothers,

The flower’s faint breath, the laurel’s undying gloom.

The scent of amorous bouquets, vague Death’s pungent smell,

Tropical fruits, leather, split carcasses;

The musty smell of bodies and old books

Mingling with odours rank and chemical.

The sound of clanging voices, shuffling feet,

Clamour and movement, taut, mechanical;

The thrust and press of bodies, sweat and heat;

Excitement, lifting, falling, like a church bell.

The present and the past; authentic life

Moving out of estrangement and blank streets

Into white wishes and Epiphany

A near event, cancelling death and pain.

Insouciant childhood hours, swift adolescent years

Are spectral here, rustling fusty leaves

In secondhand book-shops, fingering with more

I light this candled Altar’s eulogy to You

Heart of the dreaming city; mine and yours.

Knowing that in you halts the great encounter

That though all else may change: you will be ours.

You, Grainger Market, aged Patriarch

Across the desert of the years are gazing

Like Abram from his tent, while Angels come,

And in the cool evening – you remember.

What bones in city graveyards are forgetting,

What stiff-necked statues can no longer praise,

Life’s natural fulfilment, love’s tender joyous giving

You, place of meeting, from oblivious raise.

Faint Memory’s penumbra echoing

Through wrought-iron gates of shuttered evening:

Your Great Heart almost motionless, unheard, unseen

Is waiting yet the days axed by no planner’s

Bald and concrete dream.

Alan C. Brown

ODE TO THE GRAINGER MARKET

In the light of winter they shovelled your snow,

And banged their hands in the lantern’s glow,

Now, as then, from village and town

To the city they tumble in suit and gown.

And the mice ran merry in booth and rafter,

Top-hatted the street-cabs’ careless laughter,

From ox and fen and chicken pen

They took their tally and bartered like men.

Now the muddy ways are back again

And the town reshapes round the planner’s pen;

New things for old, black stones buy gold,

One by one sooty buildings come into the fold.

Who’ll by my town ? Who’ll buy my town ?

A sample of water straight from the Tyne,

“Chateau de Jesmond Dene” potent as wine,

A thirty three bus complete with its crew

Has rarity value – the graffiti’s brand new !

Who’ll buy my town ? who’ll buy my town ?

Ring out the old and ring in the new –

Here’s grass from the Moor freshly chewed by a cow

And the breath in the bottle’s a love word I knew.

Buy these footsteps, these gestures, these columns of print,

Buy these births, deaths and marriages, make your eyes squint.

Here’s a two, here’s a two, your bingo card’s up

And this baby’s for you.

Thro away town ? Throw away men ?

Who’ll put my market together again ?

Here’s perfume from Africa made by a witch,

Some strikers for matches, the matches, the foreman’s got a stitch.

Three golden whippets mounted on coal,

A genuine facsimile of Robledo’s goal.

Come and buy, come and buy, put hairs on your chest,

Here’s a fossil pork-pie from the old Crow’s Nest,

An unwashed glass from the old Dun Cow for your throttle

And the whole of Sandyford Road in a bottle !

Come and buy, come and buy,

Throw away streets ! Throw away men !

Who’ll put Newcastle together again ?

Change your fancies, your fashions,

Your records, your love

Change your stones, change your rings, this is your glove;

It fits you now as it fitted you then,

Throw away town ? Throw away men ?

Who’ll put my market together again ?

Two pence off this, three pence of that,

With every new car you get a free cat,

Thousands of stamps and a free flying bat.

Throw a way garbage, throwaway streets,

Five dozen varieties, folding seats.

Come and buy, come and buy, liquorice allsorts, fine potted meats

Throwaway town ? Throwaway men ?

Who’ll put my market together again ?

Jim Greigh

POEM FOR MAUD

bred in a market arch

a struggle

in a city’s armpit

that flower

in your time-rough hand’s

a beautiful girl in a slum alley

all that kindness in your face

and you’re right

the time are not what they were

this England’s not what it was

flowers shrink in the crumbling vase

dusk creeps in on a cart

and Maud the sun is choking

Maud this island’s sinking

and all that sleeping sea is

the silent majority

waving

Keith Armstrong

FLOWERS

Crucifixes of woven ferns,

haloes of blossoms, the floral

appurtenances of death

heaped in gaudy profusion

along tiers of artificial

grass; giraffe-necked vases

spitting sprays of purple

rushes into scent-crammed air.

Beneath a high roof of cloud-

mottled glass an alley of

commercial swamps glares sultry

luxuriance against grey crowds.

For blazing lovers, bunched and

be-ribboned roses glossy

with tears; brittle sheaves of

bluebells for strewing at

the feet of plaster saints;

odoriferous conglomerations

of colours guaranteed to

bring soporific bliss

to hushed terminal wards;

tribes of hot-house orchids

mauled by leprous dusts,

vivid petals tumbling

onto the backs of snoozing cats.

From musty shadows discreet

rows of memorial urns shine

their golden R.I.P.’s

upon passing immortals.

Michael Wilkin

MEAT

Lanes of slit carcasses,

black blood swallowed by sawdust;

vagabond dogs loaf around

mounds of discarded entrails.

Hares and rabbits strung-up

in precise military rows,

neat bullet-holes glimmering

like medals through scorched fur,

the idiot grins of death

suspended from gleaming hooks.

Bundles of sparkling plumage,

trussed pheasants hovering

above trays of glittering guts.

Venison for asking,

purple tongues loll

from crushed mouths,

city children gaze

into eyes brimful

with the quietude

of ghostly forests.

Apprentices swab scarred

chopping-blocks, weals

of caked reds

streak their aprons;

whistling, they muscle

barrow-loads of decapitated

pigs through ambling crowds.

A Venus of the cleaver

stuns my heart, a loud rose

pinned above her jutting

breasts, she hacks

a lamb in half

with consummate ease,

an ersatz boater

tilted a la Chevalier

across her blond brow.

A goddess of silversides

Sauntering gazelle-like

Within a crimson cage,

Wrapping cutlets with lissom

Grace, scornful of my stammering

Presence, her eyes stampede

Across my slovenly smile

As she pole-axes me to a

Slaughter-house of oblivion.

Michael Wilkin

FROM THE TYNESIDE POETS' ARCHIVE

2011-09-01T19:41:00.002+01:00

THE WAY TO ALSTON

On top of the Pennines, the way turns wild:
The bracken breaks through the grassed hillside
And the road falls like a dancing girl
Flinging her hair and swinging

Down to Staward Pele
To tunnel in trees of quiet secrecy
And ghosts of hidden animals.

And up onto the drizzled fells
Where rivulets scar the barren mounds,
The road twists childlike to the valley's side
Dependent, searching support.

But Alston's mountains reach the sky:
Adults, unashamed
Of their force and stature.
Stone walls tumble like broken shackles:
These hills are bondage free
And of unshakable identity.

WENDY ZOULA

Riot

2011-08-15T11:48:00.006+01:00

Fire is plasma scorching the underside

Of TV screens, safety glass closed between

Voyeurs, working themselves to a climax

Of indignation and no little fear,

And no little guilt, and the performers

Who could be poets such is their total

Self absorption, poets etching malice

On shop windows with subtleties of bricks,

Imprinting their audacious images

Of petrol bombs on dull, regulation

Riot shields. Ultimately, though, looting

Is itself just masturbation, driven

By cravings satisfied in the moment,

Ejaculations of pent up anger,

Of bravado, spilling over pavements,

Over concrete, seed broadcast on stony ground.

Then the lethargy, the recognition

That frustration has only been appeased.

Meanwhile, the moral free market speculates,

There’s profit to be had from destruction.

Ministers compete in denouncing sin,

Intending to bolster their plunging stock,

To deflect attention from kith and kin

Who are culpable of looting pensions,

Imputable for taking all credit

For themselves, complicit in the wanton

Destruction of impoverished nations.

On the odd night cities mostly smouldered,

Financiers mugged whole economies,

Running riot in the City, police

Powerless to act while society

Chose only stand back and watch, hoping

Not to be burned as the great grandchildren

Of the Iron Lady took what they wanted

For themselves alone and in doing so

Drew her to her natural conclusion.

Dave Alton

From the Tyneside Poets' Archive

2011-08-15T10:46:00.005+01:00

Summer Rain

I like the rain in summer

When the grass is resurrected

The trees shimmer with delight

The pavements smile…

And people run for the heaven of it –

Lust unleashed, damp igniting passions void below

The smell of summer is concentrated

In lethal doses of joy.

The cricketers scurry,

Lovers hide one another

Flowers laden with life suck up summer’s juices

Life rushes on.

Black earth rich as treacle

Farmers smile –

The cows are not amused.

But I sing and sing and sing.

Tim Heavisides

The Violent Suburb

In this road, “within easy reach of the city”,

Where the birds are screwed to the sky

And the air stings like an overripe peach,

The long, slow memory of violence

Coats the doors with a hard gloss.

Why should we wish people to live otherwise?

We all need out womb sooner or later,

Somewhere to gather the fragments of our lives,

When outside only drags us apart.

Yet the warm air nudges, whispers:

“See the houses, regular and modern,

Arranged like cornflakes packets

Along the tidy street.”

“See this man, bent with years of toil;

No white-collar worker he;

Unions have fought for his rights,

He has worked hard and honestly.

How can we grudge him his earthly reward?”

But the heat stings like an Indian dungfly,

And its ticking is loud in my ears:

“See the nations, how they rise,

The mythology of might growing in each,

The surgeons skilled in healing the war-wounded,

Each country surrounded by a deadly transparent wall.

Its diplomats primed

To give away nothing,

To boost their own interests…

See the nations, regular and neat,

Everybody’s suburbs,

Each soul protected like a cornflake.”

And what danger remains in the wild, wild wood,

Now that we’ve chopped in all down, all down,

Now that we’ve chopped it all down?

John Earl

More from the archives of Poetry North East

2011-08-04T16:19:00.009+01:00

STAR OVER LINDISFARNE

Cold star,
Winking down the rolling vertigo of sky,
Here I am, alone,
With nothing between us but the pulsating void of night.

Beneath the naked sky,
I have come to you.
Washed by waves of night,
Encircled by the heaving purple sea,
Bathed in spangled night-brightness across the jagged dunes
I have come,
And you don't care.

My eyes burn in the night wind;
My heart burns -
And you, cold star, inanimate,
Need no love.
Yet you and I are intimate.

The great black castle lurches behind me,
Heaving, eerie, into the sky,
As if to weigh me to the Earth.
But you, star,
You and I are pulled together.
Forever apart, we hurtle through the Universe.
You and I are intimate.

ROGER HARVEY

LINDISFARNE

What did you look at Cuthbert
On your island?
Did you marvel at the colours
in the rock pool?
Pink sea anemonies
And white coral weed
Translucent.
Or were your eyes
On the clear horizons?
This enormous vista of space
Accentuated by rocks - far distant,
The Whin Sill cropping up
At Bamburgh
And out to sea.
Sentinels,
The Farnes formed one behind the other,
Frozen whales, flat triangles of obdurate faith
Against the sea.
And were you aware of
The emotions of the Universe
As it pulled the bay free of water
Or flooded the mudflats,
The fluctuations of powers
Beyond your control?
And did you walk
The tenuous path to the mainland
When it was water free
And contact your fellows
With love?
And were you burnt by them?
What sent you back to your cell
Dwelling inwardly,
Voluntary denial
Of all sensory stimulation
To see beyond the scene?

WENDY ZOULA

BONFIRES

Something is burning inside me;
you could call it my heart
but it's much more precise than that, it's a bonfire;
crackling sticks of shy words.

Crossing the country last week,
I saw them,
jumbled up heaps of poems
assembling,
rioting bundles of wood,
alone in October-dry fields.

Tonight, sitting here,
with only you in my eyes,
dazed by the intense glare, I devise
a scheme to link bonfires across the land,
to burn down the walls between our hands,

if only to set your face alight,
if only to see one Guy Fawkes Day
your dreamy children smile.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

THE SEA IS WASHING SALT UPON YOUR SKIN

Wanting you, coast to coast, I have desired
To capture carefully the secret of mould
From those who thought they could teach me how to love
With flesh-hooks of teeth, and to store one's gold
Like rarely seen pearls of the dawn and frost.

Gone from the maps of your skin I cannot go far
From what I have already lost;
Lately when we have parted I wanted to scar
Your memory with my decay, rust,
And ruin, to tell you to your face
I wait beside death for your return.

Must
you let them breed upon your style and grace
Deceiving your heart with their flesh and lies,
And caring nothing for what is within -
Evenings bring the gentle blue from your eyes,
The sea is washing salt upon your skin.

MELANIE J. TAYLOR

SONG FOR NORTHUMBERLAND

2011-07-30T07:16:00.002+01:00

Drifting in moonlight,

the dunes sing their songs.

Wings of old battles

fly all night long.

Cry of the seagulls,

curse of the ghosts;

aches of dead warriors

scar this old coast.

Hover the kestrel,

sing out the lark,

we will be free in our time.

This air is our breath,

this sea is our thirst

and our dreams are sailing home.

Wandering through castles,

their walls are our lungs.

Searching for freedom

in country homes.

Forbears and old cares

blown in the wind;

pull of loved harbours

draws our boats in.

Surge of the salmon

and urge of the sea

leaps in our local blood.

Peal of the bluebells

and ring of bold tunes

reel in all those grey years.

Slopes of the Cheviots,

caress of the waves.

Shipwrecks and driftwood

float in our heads.

Pele-stones and carved bones

hide in these hills,

roots of new stories

in ancient tales.

Dew on our lips

and beer on the breath,

drinking the countryside in.

Bread of the landscape

and wine of this earth,

flows on these river beds.

Drifting in moonlight,

the dunes sing their songs.

Wings of old battles

fly all night long.

Cry of the seagulls,

curse of the ghosts;

aches of dead warriors

scar this old coast.

Hover the kestrel,

sing out the lark,

we will be free in our time.

This air is our breath,

this sea is our thirst

and our dreams are sailing home.

KEITH ARMSTRONG