STAR CHILD

Incandescent

Mistletoe pearl

Pendant

Glow over myth

Over

Gift in trinity

Chosen

Of God

Fetched

Through propitious

Observation

Through partial

Hope

In this vicinity

Etched

Into martial

Theodicy

Of this chosen

Nation

Holly crowned

Holly Haloed

Holy

Ghost writers

Entrenched

Positions fortified

Folly

Wound around

With

Coiled savage tinsel

Frozen

Shepherds and sprouts

Wine

Wafers or broken bread

Though

Evergreens are

Never green

Forever

The myth being

Unstable

Its truth

Lies

In the telling

In

The hearing

Fable

As fact

While

The star must stop

On

The tree top

Dave Alton

MY FRIEND JACK COMMON (1903-1968)

Ever since the sixth form,

when I found you, 

a kindred Novocastrian

in a library book,

I seem to have followed in your steps,

stumbled after you 

in rain soaked lanes,

knocked on doors

in search of your stories.

For over forty years,

I have tracked

the movement of your pen

in streets you walked

and on cross country trains

from your own Newcastle

to Warrington

Malvern,

Newport Pagnell,

Letchworth,

Yetminster,

Wallington 

and back again.

I have given talks about you,

supped in your pubs,

strode along your paragraphs 

and river paths

to try to find

that urge in you

to write 

out of your veins

what you thought of things,

what made you tick

and your loved ones 

laugh and cry.

I tried to reach you in a thesis,

to see you as a lad in Heaton,

but I could never catch your breath

because I didn’t get to meet you

face to face,

could only guess

that you were like me:

a kind of kindly 

socialist writer

in a world

too cruel for words.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Peter Common Well said Keith!

Dear kindly socialist writer - this is great - thanks a lot for sending it

Love

Pat

ASYLUM

Precariously,

At the very edge

Of a fisherman’s jetty,

Jutting out,

Like a wooden tongue,

From the bank

And its planked,

Wheelchair ready,

Walkway,

He stands,

Balanced

Between earth and water,

Thinking Mother tongue,

Speaking English

To ducks,

Migrants

Flocking out

From Siberian inclemency,

Greedy for crumbs

Not words

Which he scatters freely,

Doubting

They’d be quite so eager

If the bag he carries

Was for game

Rather

Than bread.

 

Dave Alton

 

DIAL THE SUN

A new project for next year's Heritage Open Days (September 8th to 11th) to mark the bicentenary of George Stephenson's sundial at Dial Cottage, Killingworth.

We will be encouraging local writers and schoolchildren to come up with poems, songs, stories and artwork to celebrate the sundial and for the end products to be displayed in a touring exhibition to be launched at the White Swan Centre and Dial Cottage with events to coincide with it when a booklet of the written material and artwork, together with an historical background, will be promoted together with a souvenir poetry poster featuring Keith Armstrong’s sundial poem with artwork by Peter Dixon.

THE SQUARE & COMPASS: A FOLKSONG CYCLE FOR ST. MARY'S ISLAND BY G. F. PHILLIPS

G. F. PHILLIPS WRITES:

My current project is The Square & Compass: A Folksong Cycle for St Mary’s Island and Its Surrounds, North Tyneside. It is a collection of poems as song lyrics that has been set to music by folksong composer, John Bushby. The sixteen songs run chronologically and follow the compass point from North, North East to North and tell of the island and the nearby land’s history.

‘What happened over those years between 1722 and 2006 on St Mary’s Island maybe slight, being its little narratives, but it gave those folk a voice, their incidents, however brief, of lives lived, now written and sung about.’

Here are two extracts:

At compass point North, North East Last Drop of Ale is a tall story in the tradition of gallows humour.

Chorus.

Michael Curry’s had his last drop of ale (2)

He had this rage and he killed the landlord

So they hung him up; he’s as stiff as a board.

Now one man’s wager is another man’s pledge (2)

And four pints of ale can be yours all free

If you ask of the corpse, “How are you Curry?”

At compass point West South West a dispute breaks out in Dodging Bullets:

Old Ewen blames Joe Patterson

For letting out his field

That Joe is in the army’s keep

If anyone gets killed

Dodging bullets

Old Ewen says they fly his alehouse way.

Dodging bullets

On stepping stones over the island stray.

A CD and an accompanying 38pp booklet of my lyrics with historical notes and a three page article is on sale (see www.gfphillipswriter.co.uk for details).

LION AND LAMB

Early September,

ice begins to grip our hearts.

Ash from a long smoke, the city lies.

Ghostly images of our fathers rise,

drift in the blood-thick smog.

The traffic snarls,

dead bodies rot and clot in our veins,

dust blown into cul de sacs.

8.45, a Thursday night,

a senile couple stagger in from the mist.

They order half pints,

the old man sniffs,

his eyes the faint grey of a wintry sky.

The old woman’s face is ruddy, bloody,

creased like the neck of a tortoise.

She mumbles to him

and he mumbles back.

‘Liar!’ she shouts.

‘Quiet!’ he says and raises a hand in warning.

‘Liar!’ again,

‘Liar!’ again

but louder she cries.

‘Sharrup you old bag!’

‘Liar!’ she cries,

‘I gave you a pound!’

‘No!’ he replies.

‘Liar, you liar!’

‘Quiet you bag!’

They sip their half pints and rise.

He steps outside.

We hear his stick tap.

She shuffles, bow legged, to the door.

A pool of urine gathers round her feet,

she trails it out into the street.

They are lost in a whirl,

a merry-go-round.

I see their desperate hands grope in the night,

flail against the glass outside.

Blood spatters windows,

runs to the earth,

seeps and nourishes birth;

birth of new dreams,

new schemes.

It seems,

tonight,

a new sense of fear is born.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

TUEBINGEN/DURHAM POETRY & MUSIC NIGHT AT ELM TREE, DURHAM

PHOTOS BY PETER DIXON & CYNTHIA LONSDALE

VISITING POETS FROM DURHAM'S TWIN CITY OF TUEBINGEN

As part of the ongoing literary exchange between Tuebingen and Durham, Anna Fedorova and Yannick Lengkeek will be performing with local poets and folk musicians at Ye Old Elm Tree, Crossgate, Durham City at 19.30 on Thursday 12th November. All welcome. 

You can also catch them in the Williams Library at St Chad's College, University of Durham on Friday 13th November at 15.00. Please put the word around about this.

FURTHER INFORMATION FROM DR KEITH ARMSTRONG, NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS TEL. 0191 2529531.

Anna Fedorova

I was born in Charkow (Ukraine) in 1992. I have

lived in Germany since the age of 5. I grew

up in Stuttgart and I have studied art history and

philosophy in Tübingen since 2012.

Founder member of "Dichterkammer" in

Tübingen which is a collective of young

writers. I was recently published in the literature 

magazine "trash pool".

Yannick Lengkeek

Born in 1992 in Nijmegen, Netherlands. Grown up in Padua (Italy) and Reutlingen. Since 2012 studies of rhetoric and history at the University of Tübingen. First reading in Tübingen at the Hölderlin tower in 2013 during the Bücherfest. Publication of several poems in "trash pool" magazine. Active member of the Dichterkammer Tübingen. Several readings and co-organization of smaller literature events in Tübingen.

TYNESIDE POETS PHILLIPS & ARMSTRONG LIVE AT THE GRAINGER MARKET 180TH!