Two Songs by G.F. Phillips

The Watermen


The Craig family worked as watermen along the quayside in Newcastle. They carried out many a rescue from the Tyne at a time when there was about an average of one drowning per week in the mid to late 19th century.


James Craig he lived in Ouse Street, a Quayside waterman,
Who at the age of fourteen he went from lad to man;
He heard shouts from the river; a man was in distress,
He was saved, he was saved gannin’ under
Afore the waters got him forst.


An’ James his reputation was sealed reit from the start,
The tark that he was dead brave, a true waterman at heart,
For he lived his life in danger - divvn’t aal the watermen –
How he saved, how he saved some twenty folk,
They were one an’ the same t’ him.


His son who was his namesake he didn’t have to ask,
He would be a waterman an’ got doon to the task;
He learned the swell an’ currents; he was the savin’ grace;
Who was there, who was there to be rescued,
An’ nowt bad was said t’ their face.


Then George put in a rescue, a brotherly resolve
An’ got a floatin’ polisman in a slippery tight hold;
So up he comes, he’s collared; they were cold an’ tired an’ wet.
So shackled, so shackled to his body, oh -
Much better than a noose round his neck.


Now last of aal was Joseph he wouldn’t be ootdone,
He never bragged aboot it or said me, A’m yor best son;
He never wanted glory an’ he never wanted fame;
To be strong to be strong to haul them up
If he must he’d de it agin.






A Second Look (Hannah’s Song)
‘I have often said I was, still am and always will be a plain country woman, and proud to be a plain country woman.’
Hannah Hauxwell of Low Birk Hatt farm, in Teesdale


With Hannah’s trusty bucket
She trudged down to the burn,
Her stick to break its icy grip,
How living alone she learned
To savour every running drop
To wash in, drink and cook,
The least she’s got – she’s none too proud
To give things a second look.


Long has been her moor-land home,
Her farm’s ancestral seat;
Her dale this one big garden,
And through winter’s slow retreat
Make do and mend they were her ways
Despite her threadbare looks,
The least she’s got – she’s none too proud
To give things a second look.


Now Hannah’s trusty bucket
Hung up it had no worth
For age had loosened all her grip
And ice hardened rebirth;
Though she to village ways was bound,
With keepsakes, all she took
Reminds her that she’s none too proud
To give things a second look.

the long march back

25TH ANNIVERSARY FOLK AND POETRY SOCIAL COMMEMORATING THE END OF THE 1984-85 MINERS' STRIKE AND AFTERMATH



7:30 PM, SAT 6 MARCH 2010,UPSTAIRS LOUNGE,BRIDGE HOTEL,CASTLE GARTH, NEWCASTLE--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MUSIC: BEESWING, MARIE LITTLE, GARY MILLER OF THE WHISKY PRIESTS, KIDDAR’S LUCK,PITMAN DAVID DOUGLASS, THE LEGENDARY JOHNNY HANDLE AND A CAMEO PERFORMANCE BY MIKE ELLIOTT. POETS: PAUL SUMMERS, WILLIAM MARTIN, KATRINA PORTEOUS, LISA CAMPBELL ...AND MASTER OF CEREMONIES, TYNESIDE POET KEITH ARMSTRONG

bridging the gap

Bridging The Gap
Wednesday 27 January
11.00-11.30am BBC RADIO 4

Bridging The Gap is a vivid sound portrait of the Tyne Bridge. The programme draws on the voices and sounds of the bridge, the river, local people and wildlife, while exploring the history, construction and role of the bridge.

The bridge is hugely symbolic in the North East. As a giant arch, it reflects the changes that have taken place in the North East, including developments on the Tyne and overall changes in lifestyle. Today, wildlife has moved in; where the industrial giants of the past have moved out, salmon and otters can be found in the river.

The bridge is also a nesting site for kittiwakes, a species of ocean-travelling gull. More than 150 pairs have been recorded here, making it the furthest inland breeding site of kittiwakes in the world.

Contributors to the programme include sound recordist Chris Watson; poet Keith Armstrong; Ian Ayris from Newcastle City Council; Steve Lowe of Northumberland Wildlife Trust; Steve Mays, architectural and landscape photographer; and Tommy Proctor, River Tyne guide.

Producer/Sarah Blunt

BBC Radio 4 Publicity

Two Poems by G.F. Phillips

East Wind*


NEWSBOY: Get your papers!
Get your papers!

BYSTANDER: Huh! Them papers!
They make us or break us,
Whatever way they want us t’ be
They just talk doon t’ ye an’ me.

Well, Ta, bonny lad
Aw! Me pins are feelin’ bad
While ye stand cold and snivelling’
I’m gannin’ home a-shiverin.’

CHORUS: In that East Wind
Branches bend west,
Breakin’ what’s old,
Leavin’ what’s best.

TWO SHOPPERS: But we’ve had t’ find shelter
Round this shoe shop corner,

1st SHOPPER: Lookin’ at shoes

2nd SHOPPER: Just for something t’ do.

CHORUS: For that east Wind
It gives us trouble;
But let’s not forget
It’s the same for us all.

• A tempera panel, by Harry Wilson, one of the Pitman Painters of Ashington, Northumberland, 1935.
• ‘In the panel, disposed around a street corner that represents all the essentials of a two-point perspective, saplings whip in the wind, figures are tugged, a newsboy blows on his fingers and, to leeward, three becalmed shoppers look at a shoe display.’ William Feaver, Art Critic of the Sunday Observer.

Bait Time*

Wi’ me pick I have t’ hack away,
Me back and shoulders achin’;
I make black nuggets smash and fall,
It’s grit and sweat I’m tastin’.

Oh, Bait time is a long time comin’.
Bait time is a long way doon.
Bait time is a long time comin’.
Bait time cannot come t’ soon.

And me pony hauls wagons away,
Me marra does his share;
It’s thirsty work – it seems ne end
In this foul and dirty air -.

Oh, bait time, etc.

Me hunger pangs have come on strong
Wi’ me belly’s rumblin’ tark.
I stoop by wagons that we fill,
What I feed keeps us in work.

Oh, bait time, etc.

Me sarnies have their rich fruit seam,
Me pony grabs a bit;
And when it’s broken off for him
He makes short work o’ it.

Oh, bait time was a long time comin’.
Bait time man and beast must choose.
Bait time was a long time comin’.
Bait time there’s ne time t’ lose’.

* based on a painting by Jimmy Floyd, Bait Time, 1946.
‘Experience gives to Jimmy Floyd’s Bait Time its air of complicity as the pony reaches over to take a bit of jam sandwich.’
(from Pitmen Painters: The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver, Mid-Northumberland Arts Group, Carcanet Press, 1993).

Stain & Copper

STAIN


Dun! Such is the blackbird’s colour,
The female at least. As was the one,
Frantic to escape the pursuance of magpies,
That flew into the kitchen window.
Double glazing is unyielding, it’s bone,
Especially the eggshell skull, that shatters.
All I heard was the thump, dull as dun,
As if some passer-by had knocked just once.
Looking out I witnessed a blackbird, male,
Yellow beak twittering as its agitated head
Jerk from side to side, while on the ridge tile
Of the garage, the burly magpie perched,
Unmoved, pitiless gaze making its assessments
While the frantic accuser bobbed from bough
To fence post and back. An absence of cats,
I suspect, determined the magpie to swoop
And carry off what was now no more
Than carrion. The widower bird, dressed it seems
By nature for mourning, became silent, still,
Before launching on to the air and away,
Seeking, no doubt, for another mate, leaving
Me standing looking out through stained glass
Thinking, I’d better wipe that off
Before it dries on.

COPPER

The reason these spoil heaps are called spoil heaps
Is that they spoil every child who works them
For a few coppers earned gleaning copper
Nuggets from wasted earth wasting them.
Africa days are tinder days, so slack
Tee shirts and shorts and flip-flops seem just right.
Except, it’s cold before dawn when empty
Bellied walking begins, although sun’s up
By empty bellied arrival at the
Deep depression. Here, rock is more precious
Than life by a long fall, value holding
Every pick blow, shovel full, bead of sweat,
As it’s hauled in sacks out from hollowed ground.
All that labour weighed, recompensed in part,
Leavings left in those heaps where kids scrabble,
Not for fun as the game is for eating.
In this reception class the life lessons
Are hard, just as demanding as they could be.
Eight hours – no playtimes, no lunch break, no lunch!
Afternoons are sand and water, waist deep
In metallic slurry washing away
Impurities soaking in through bare skin,
Elixir, some say, of eternal youth,
Even those who grow up remain child-like.
Come home time and tired tots totter along
The long road home. Village elders,
Who aren’t so old really, hang heads heavy
With all their tribal tales of warriors,
Of mastering lions, of white lies believed,
Told too often beneath the copper sun
Of evening, a sun setting on bellies
Still bloated since precious prices have shrunk.
Each minor miner sleeps uneasily,
Dreaming of gingham frocks or shirts with ties,
And bells ringing out work, ringing in school,
Pennies ringing in pockets to buy books.
Beyond their dreaming stands another boy,
A few coppers cluttering his loose change,
In deep pockets of designer trousers,
Causing unnecessary discomfort.
So he picks out the offending pence
And casts it aside with enough disdain
To merit his mates’ approval. So what!
It’s as useless to him as algebra
And all the school bored days he endures.

                                             Dave Alton

TRY TO UNDERSTAND ME

Try to understand me,

where I come from, where I’m going;

I’m drifting and I need you

to save my hopes from ruin.

You’ll need to know what splits me,

my need for roots and dreams;

it’s not the earth that hurts me,

it’s the tyrants and their schemes.

My father sailed the world before me,

to Rio and to Spain;

his father taught him shells and ships

and how to smile in pain.

Mother stayed at home and nursed,

came from a quiet place;

she ran the river and the green,

grew strong, with a gentle face.

I split my tongue in the early days,

shook off asthma as I grew,

fell into school and struggled out,

just clutching what I knew.

I was bred for something ‘better’,

for an office on fifth floor,

away from sea-spray and stray sheep,

with my name upon the door.

My mother and my father

scraped and saved for me,

bruised each other in the process,

gave up smoking and the sea.

Try to understand me,

why I’ve come back to earth;

it’s because I need to know myself

and the landscape of my birth.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Two Poems by Dave Alton

Reading

Often, while the house is quiet, I’m reading
One of the slightly foxed anthologies
Prised from its tightly packed bookshelf, its spine
So faded selection is mere guesswork,

Except for me knowing this modest library
And its order beyond cataloguing.
Sometimes, when physicists publicly
Contemplate a possible multiverse

I wonder why science has been so slow
To recognise what seems quite obvious
To avid readers. Pages of poetry
Are the absolute proof of prodigious

Fecundity inherent in creation.
Not only is the past and present
Pressed like rare blooms between heavy pages,
But the future also is cast in words

Already written. Possibilities
Are realised and explored, every page turned
Opens yet another world, which is why
Tyrants burn books. For the threat to them comes

Not from the poets who can be silenced,
But the poems that cannot be contained
By razor wire and watch towers. Even when
Committed to the pyre poems become sparks

Fanned by the wind and igniting tinder
In unexpected places. This is how
New worlds come into being, when people act
According to such illumination.

Reading, at its best, requires silence,
Although it’s in the silence that voices
Are raised in anger, in exultation,
Until even the full stops are screaming.

                     
Old Joe

Everyone down the club had known Old Joe,
They would have missed him, only the club closed
Two years gone, windows blinded with plywood.
Not for the first time police broke down his door,
Once they’d got their breath back having climbed
All nineteen flights, the lift being knackered again.
Who’d thought it a good idea to upend
A terraced street and stand it vertical?
Who’d thought it a good idea to stick
Some old gadgie in the very top flat,
Up on a level with the seagulls?
“Bloody good view over the Tyne.” someone said,
“Nowt worth seeing,” Old Joe had grumbled,
“Since the yards went, and my vision with them.”
Death leaves chaos and a dreadful stench,
Leaves the younger copper stifling a retch,
Leaves the older one bothered for a moment
By his own mortality. A clutter
Of sock and grey underpants, toppling stacks
Of the local free paper, chipped mugs
Stained with tannin like fingers jaundiced
By years of rollies. Anarchy of old age
Had not possessed Joe entirely it seemed,
For against one wall, in a bookcase,
Meticulously dusted and in order,
Stood proud volumes and selected works.
And by his decomposing armchair
An anthology lay open, face-down
On the thin carpet, making a small tent
Accommodating rebellious ideas,
Refugee thoughts from the world surrounding,
And a well polished magnifying glass.
However much his vision faded
It appeared Old Joe never went blind.

Two Poems by G.F. Philips

The following poem was published in the anthology Living Rights: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Stories and Poems (volume one (articles 1-10) by Flames Books, Birmingham, England, edited by Marisa Antonaya. The poem grew out of a couple of interviews and a series of photographs that the Burmese woman kindly discussed and showed the poet.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948. There are in total 30 articles. In 2009 the United Nations celebrates its sixtieth year.
The quotation that heads the poem is from the photographer, Dean Chapman, who secretly took shots of daily life under the Burmese military dictatorship in the 1990s. The photographs formed an exhibition at The Side Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne in 2000.

From The Testimony Of An Otherwise Citizen
for Colette Anderson

‘I find it impossible to be ‘objective’ in my approach to the joys, desperation and terrifying fear that the peoples of Burma experience. It is the indomitable spirit, their kindness, determination and humanity that motivates me to persevere with my documentation of these people’s endless suffering.’
Dean Chapman,1962

Rescheduled line closing in on Bristol,
Its cargo weighing considerably more
Than its usual crates where shades of English
Mixed with Burmese. The little ones their voices
Weak from expectation or the strangeness
Of a cooler landscape, pale complexion.
Hidden on board all the way from Rangoon
Like fraudsters living under pretence;
Playing up to the moods of sea,
Three siblings with enough noise to match,
Already toughened by father’s orders,
Their lives shored-up and stirring
From the dangers that always lurked within.
First it was the Yanks then the Aussies kicked out.
The army with their zeal saw fit to govern,
Beating unrest through more unrest, shouldered
The blame on those in retreat, and so were guilty
By their actions. The same when students torched
Your university. The soldiers raided,
But days before you had already fled.
Your father had his only weapon:
A billiard cue – with more hope than threat.

All roads straight, all led from the capital.
You clutching hand-held beads and blown-up views
Of Windsor Road where, flimsy like new shoots,
You had hauled yourself free of the good earth.

Another day the coast would have been
Your Shangri-La, as it was for grandfather.
Earlier that century he had roamed in
From Ireland, into the interior;
Though spoon-fed on occupation and famine
It gave him the chance to own a pharmacy,
What the army took out of private hands,
(As was discovered later) a return,
It was said – a going back to basics.

Another Sunday it would have been
Something sacred. Fussed over by servants,
Beyond serrated palms in the games room
Your father soon ahead in billiards.
He hadn’t played so well in weeks. Standing proud –
Talking compounds was more his thing. His rush
In the way he’d follow-through was lethal,
For each ball he had to slug he’d see as
his enemy to smash.

In the depression of the 1930s unemployed men from the North East were drafted into ‘instruction centres’, i.e. work camps. One such work camp was in Thetford Forest in East Anglia. There was a national timber shortage, and thanks mainly to them the forest is entirely man-made.

Floaters

As time went by they had to work for their dole money
In one of Whitehall’s appointed zones: the bleak railhead
Near Brandon where men from terrace were dragooned
Upon the heath – it was new to them.
In tented beginnings their eyes caught blown sand
Off Thetford Chase, its choking bracken,
Caught as the strange accents were between one people
That summer of 1936;
At first it was why they were greeted with suspicion -
If that was not punishment enough -
To make them want to turn back.

But then some men at the sniff of hay, local girls,
They forgot home and pride; themselves. They were a fillip,
An attention other than an ex-soldier’s orders,
What one must do and here’s the plan of action:
It stretched their limbs and patience to the maximum,
Putting up corrugated iron huts
That became for them their living quarters,
Complete with bunk beds and copper boiler.
Those huts in a row grew as the work grew
While the long exercise exhausted them;
Any thoughts of protest lost to men
Like cracked branches tossed aside in a gale.
Yet they lived in hope their spirit would not crack
Under the strain, be left voiceless, deferred; dry
As had this glacial plain.

On a long exercise more action
In the cutting of track in allotted space,
With ditches dug that some men were told to refill
Much later just to keep the backsliders busy,
A humiliation born out of superiority,
You know, the pointed finger, that kind of stuff.
But they still worked on a settler’s life,
Hardened to it, as ever, conditioned.

The bracken was gradually cut down, out of its tangle,
So all could see further down the nose of land.
As the settlers headed back to camp
The cleared ground opened up like a wound.

Next day the labourers were herded out,
Their bit done as behind them
The planters (the bees-knees) moved in en masse,
Yet their energy was soon stripped as loose bark.

Then in three years the forest looked primeval
From Gallows Hill the leafy way to timber.
But soon green trucks rolled over shaky ground
To carve out tracks through mud and spoils
While others with time off waiting for thumbs up
Took to local girls thrilled by their crisp uniforms,
Men living for today, close to the edge,
Seeing it as an interlude, dotage.

in blood

In blood I am

an apprentice boy of Newcastle.

Falling foul

of hacks and parkies,

I tipple and prance

and strum my poems at night.

I sing in the Blackie Boy

and tap-dance on tables.

I wear my shoes on my head

like some medieval surrealist,

a Geordie Bosch.

I go fleeing about 

down Pudding Chare

with the company of fools.

Pissing music in the dark,

like a ruffian

I wear curls around my ears.

The City Fathers will rail

at all my gay ribbons and lace,

my gold and silver threads

and shoes of Spanish leather

but give me the pudding-basin treatment if you will,

see if I fucking care you bastard Puritans,

you killjoys.

I’m a Jingling Geordie

and freedom flies nightly

in my flowing hair.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Note:

The apprentice boys of Newcastle kept falling foul of the Puritan tendency. An Act of the Merchant Adventurers of 1554 thunders against their gay dress and 'tippling and dancing... what use of gitternes [guitars] by night!' In 1603, the youths are again enjoined 'not to dance or use music in the streets at night': nor are they to deck themselves in velvet and lace - or to wear their 'locks at their ears like ruffians'. All to no avail: in 1649, Newcastle's Puritan elders were still railing against ribbon and lace, gold and silver thread, and coloured shoes of Spanish leather. Nine recalcitrant youths received the pudding-basin treatment for their hair.

Despite this killjoy attitude it is nevertheless the case that the Newcastle corporation was unique among towns in maintaining a 'company of fools' from 1561-1635. Fools were otherwise confined to courts or noble families. 

Competition

Word processing your creative work is great for only keeping the end result unlike the days of old-fashioned pen and paper, even the tap-tap of the clanking typewriter or smooth electric machine – nothing quite as physical now or needing to use all your fingers. So I thought it would be a good idea to show how a song written about a year ago developed into a song cycle with a narrative about the banking crisis/credit crunch. There is no crossing out (just a spell check), but the reader will be able to see how parts fitted into a new whole, what became a collaboration and subsequent work in progress with American composer, Adam Bruce.


DEALER:

Competition, competition,
Bulls or bears will grow;
Competition, competition,
Bids will come and go.

Everyday the bids flash up,
They’re flashing up on my screen:
Will you buy me? Will you sell?
They’re hanging there in between.

It’s game on a really gripping game on
And it’s always a thrill and chase for me;
And the hope is I can always stick it out
Or I’m back on the shelf, you see,

With competition, competition,
It keeps you on your toes;
Competition, competition,
Bids will come and go.

I mustn’t burn myself out,
But make a fast buck
Then the quicker I’m out…

Competition, competition –
I must live the dream;
Competition, competition,
Bids come fat or lean.

Everyday the bids flash up,
They’re flashing up on my screen:
Will you buy me? Will you sell?
They’re hanging there in between.

It’s game on a really gripping game on
And it’s always a thrill and chase for me…

If competition, competition,
It could flash my dream,
Competition, competition,
Bids come fat or lean.

Competition makes you…
Makes you want to dream…

*
Song One (from The Bull and Bear Song Cycle)
In and out of the Dealers’ Room

CHORUS OF DEALERS:

Everyday the bids flash up,
They’re flashing up on our screens:
Will you buy me? Will you sell?
They’re hanging there in between.

And with competition, competition,
It keeps you on your toes;
With competition, competition
Bids will come and go.

KARL:

It was Jasper, he struck this deal,
No way could I forget
For when you owe someone money
You’re always in their debt.

He said some tycoon wanted this shipping firm,
It will go down; its shares were low.
We can snap them up and sell them high
And it’s all because he’s in the know.

CHORUS OF DEALERS:

And everyday the bids flash up,
They’re flashing up on our screens:
Will you buy me? Will you sell?
They’re hanging there in between.

And with competition, competition,
It makes you live the dream;
With competition, competition
Bids come fat or lean.

KARL:

At first I didn’t know what to say
For he made great play of it;
But when we hit the jackpot we’ll be away
Because as he said if I stay on here
By the age of thirty five I would be burnt out.
And then the money I owe could be paid back,
And there would be plenty of money over
And I could start my own little business.

G. F. Phillips

G. F. Phillips is the printed version in the manner of my signature or otherwise known as Gordon Frank Phillips on my birth certificate, a printer’s son from St Albans. I now live on Tyneside as a tutor in Literature and Creative Writing for the WEA and Newcastle City Learning.

When the Time Comes

Galaxies are fermenting in soup tins
Where one shuttle ends another begins
While wyrd systers start weaving red banners
Removal of hearts requires cold spanners
And a surgical spoon woven from grass
Owners of property contrive to pass
Through helium smiles as if the broad moon
Is only significant as a rune
Explaining how rocks may be defeated
How oceans might have to be deleted
How mountains shall be humbled, how a gorge
Might well be remembered as the last forge
Whereat Vulcan clattered and Wayland Smith
Hammered intricate lattice-work of myth
Speaking nothing of history rather
Telling the future is always farther
Away than is usually suggested
As it’s there hypotheses are tested
And one magnificent monument raised
On a plinth of ice, on a weak day praised
For the observation of lassitude
Which is sad, of course, and joyful, of course
When the book is written and yet the source
Is not even mentioned despite the sound
Of weeping becoming ever profound
Amongst atheists who learn to insist
The nothing they are sure of does not exist
So bring sandwich bags for the parapets
To keep certain revolutionaries
Unsure of what the latest wind carries
Now doctors are consulting flights of birds
Letting ministers explain why huge herds
Of pint glasses dashed against cobblestones
Is final confirmation no one owns
A single garden statue worth coaching
And that stars are just headlamps approaching,

                                                   Dave Alton

DURHAM

Cobbled webs of my thoughts

hang around your lanes.

A brass band nestles in my head,

cosy as a bedbug.

I’m reading from a balcony

poems of Revolution.

It’s Gala Day and the words are lost

in the coal dust of your lungs.

Your dark satanic brooding Gaol

throws a blanket over blankness:

a grim era of second-hand visions

aches like a scab in a cell.

And rowing a punt up your Bishop’s arse

a shaft of sunlight on the river

strikes me only as true,

shining into the eyes of all the prisoners

swinging from Cathedral bells.

Old Durham Town, you imprison me

like a scream in a Salvation Army song,

release me soon:

someone 

get ready to hug me.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

STRONG WORDS FROM THE STREETS

Doctor Keith Armstrong on Newcastle writer Jack Common (1903-68) and the poetry of community in the North East


I have known Jack Common since the sixth form of Heaton Grammar School in
Newcastle upon Tyne when I was introduced to his novel of working class life
on the streets of my own Heaton, 'Kiddar's Luck' and its sequel on growing
up in Newcastle, 'The Ampersand'.
He struck me as a man after my own heart. Someone who knew his roots, who
had come from the same streets as mine. His father was a railway worker,
mine from the shipyards.
We had a shared sense of the industrial heritage of Newcastle, and a sense
of community.
When I walked along the Fourth Avenue where he was born, and down its back
lane, the colour of his words and the characters that haunt him sprang to
life. A gritty realism tinged with the remembrance of things past, the
shouts of the street-hawkers and the cries of kids playing in the gutters of
the early twentieth century.
He stayed with me as I went to college and began work in the library world
in the 1960s, which I later left for community work and the life of the
political activist in the seventies, and he is still with me now as a
guardian soul looking over my slim shoulders as I try to make sense of his
life and work. Sometimes I wish he'd go away.
With a name like Jack Common he had to be on the side of the common folk -
and he was.

'A commitment to the virtues of the common man formed the basis
of Jack Common's political beliefs. For a better - socialist - society would
never be produced through political programmes designed by intellectuals,
planners and professional politicians - no matter how well intentioned. The
roots of a better society had to be established within the daily practices,
the hope and aspirations of the ordinary men and women who made up the
working class.' (Strong Words, 1977).

It was through this kind of inspiration that myself and others established
the Strong Words community publishing project in the North East of England
back in 1977.
Its aim was to publish booklets based on the lives and experiences of
working people in the area, expressed throught the words of the people
themselves.

'It is this belief in the importance of strengthening cultural
traditions within the working class which forms the strongest link between
Jack Common and the Strong Words project.' (Strong Words, 1977).

Through its publications and events, the project attempted to express
working class people's living experience in the North East of England
through the words of the people themselves; their own stories told in prose,
in verse, in conversation. Working people were given the opportunity to
publish and communicate their own feelings and ideas - about the past and
future; about work and the lack of it; about family life, having children
and being a child; about problems and happiness, victories and defeats. And
in a booklet that was cheap enough for people to afford.
Strong Words was based upon the belief that it is important to retain and
strengthen cultural heritage in a way that allows working people to benefit
from each other's experiences.

'So much is written about  working class people (in the press, on TV, in
academic books and journals) but very little is written by them. The purpose of
Strong Words was to 'alter this a little by encouraging people to write of their
own experiences or to document them through recorded conversations. In this respect,
we hope that these booklets will come as a breath of fresh air. Above all, we hope
that they will be read and discussed in pubs and clubs, workplaces and
communities throughout the area.' (Strong Words, 1977).


Strong Words and subsequent projects could be said to be influenced by the
likes of Tommy Armstrong and his fellow pitman-poet Joseph Skipsey, who
describes his own background vividly:

'I had no means of education to speak of. I was born on St Patrick's Day,
1832, in the village of Percy Main, near North Shields. That was the time of
the great colliery strike. My father was one of the leading men among the
miners of our village and whilst trying to keep between his workmates and
police was shot dead outside the "Pineapple Inn" near Chirton. My mother
Bella was left with eight children of whom I was the youngest, only four
months old.
When I was seven years of age I went to work down the pit but even the mere
pittance that I earned was of importance to a family such as ours, for those
were times of desperate poverty. I became a trapper boy. I worked from
twelve to sixteen hours a day in the bowels of the earth, seeing daylight
only on Sundays for this was a life of work and sleep. That was when I
taught myself to write. Mostly I sat in complete darkness, but occasionally
a kindly miner would give me the end of his tallow candle which I struck
against the wall with a bit of clay. At such happy seasons I amused myself
by drawing figures upon the trapdoor and trying to write words by copying
from hand-bills and notices I found from time to time ... I had begun to
write down some of the verses that I had made, and here I ought to explain
that I never wrote anything with a view to publication. I made verses
because it seemed a natural and delightful thing to do. Most of my smaller
pieces were composed as I was walking to and from the pit and some of these
have been praised as among the best I have written.'

'Oh sleep,
Oh sleep my little baby,
Thou wilt wake thy father with thy cries
And he unto the pit must go before the sun begins to rise.
He'll toll for thee the whole day long
And, when the weary work is o'er,
He'll whistle thee a merry song
And drive the bogies from the door'.

(Skipsey, J., 1991)

Indeed, it was only when Skipsey attempted to ape the stylistic manner of
the 'literati' of the day that his writing ran hollow. In this he was like
the Scots border poet James Hogg who, as:

'the self-educated shepherd established his reputation as a writer and came
into contact with the sophisticated literary world of Edinburgh, the
predictable consequence was that he accepted too uncritically the validity
of Edinburgh's opinions and fashions. As a result, many of his works are
simply attempts to produce the kind of writing that he thought Edinburgh
would admire - and this is one of the main reasons for the existence of the
large body of unsuccessful verse which has done so much to harm his
reputation ... Most of Hogg's best poetry was written when his object was to
please himself rather than Edinburgh. Thus his many excellent songs make no
concessions to the taste of genteel society, but are rather written in the
spirit of the traditional folk songs he knew as a child in Ettrick Forest.'
(Mack, D.S., 1970).

Such tensions are as valid today as they were in the days of both Skipsey
and Hogg; indeed, I feel them in my own writing and in my concern to speak
with a regional non-metropolitan voice.

It is this concern which is at the heart of Strong Words, Durham
Voices and Northern Voices. Listen, for example, to retired miner Fred
Scott of Newburn (1983):


'There's a lot who have authority but it's only power that's got a hold of
them. It's not that the man is any different to me. The pollis is only a man
the same as me. I don't think the vicar will be any better than me as
regards living, to live a life. To help everybody - that's been my mainstay
in all my life, right from a kid. We were fetched up that way - to care for
people, and I've just continued on. We're all born the same and we all go
back the same, and I say they shouldn't be allowed to hold as much land,
none of them, because they're strangling the people with what they're doing.
It's still going on. The whole lot of them are living off your back. These
people are born into it, they've got it, and they're going to make sure you
don't get it - but you're the man who's working, you're the man that's using
the shovel. Freedom's a fascination. That's the main thing. Nobody to tell
you to do this or do that. Free as the dicky birds'.

And to farmer Joe Yeats of Gilsland in the booklet 'Missile Village'
(1978), reflecting on the impact of the Blue Streak rocker launcher development programme at nearby Spadeadam:

'Spadeadam was a good thing in a sense. We had no dole then in this part of
the country. It was a big miss when it finished. But to me it was a useless
asset. I suppose they would know what they were doing probably, but to me it
was still a waste of money. When I was up in them fields out there, I would
see this big puff of smoke over Spadeadam and I'd think "Hey up, there's a
few more thousand pound gone up in the sky there". That's all it was, a puff
of smoke, you know'.

A feature of many of the Strong Words/Northern Voices publications has
been the attempt to link past and present by including material from young
and old alike to reflect changing times in their communities. This from
youngsters Jonathan Scott and Pamela Staley (1991):

HANDS

A miner's hands are cold and cracked;
A miner's hands are cold and damp;
A miner's hands are never young;
A miner's hands are worn and dirty;
A miner's hands are sore and aching;
A miner's hands are always painful;
A miner's hands are his life-long tools:
Hands for playing when he is young,
Hands for working when he is strong,
Hands for begging when his life is almost done.

These poems by young people were in the tradition of the Teesdale lead-miner
poet Richard Watson, described here by Claude Watson (Northern Voices, 1991):

'Dick Watson was a good poet. He worked at Wire Gill but it was well known
that he was fairly useless - and his wife was worse. At Wire Gill, there was
a man who worked the horses; he drew the level. This chap used to get up
early in the morning to get his horse ready for the start of work. He had a
young lad that helped him. One morning he said to the young lad, 'Now, lad,
thou just lie on this morning and watch the pantomime when 'Poetry Dick'
gets up, what with bits of string and newspaper, 'tis a bonny pantomime!'
Everything was fastened up with bits of string and newspaper to keep him
warm!'

'Poetry Dick':

'Mary, what is there here
But toil and poverty?
As for the friends you're speaking of,
What have they done for me?
Here I may sweat and dig for lead,
'Mid smoke and dust to earn my bread,
And I go half clothed and half fed,
Till I can work no more.'

In the publication 'Where Explosions Are No More' (1988), miner John Egan of Trimdon
told his own story, the basis of a touring show which portrayed his life in narrative,
poetry and folk-song:

'The first pony I got was a grand little fella. They called him 'Spring'. I
always remember Spring. I can see him now, Spring, he was grey. All the
ponies had names before they came down the pit: Boxer, Whiskey, Mottram,
Martin, all sorts of names, but my pony was Spring.'

The booklet also featured poems and stories by local children like Dianne
Duddin:

PIT PONIES

Pit ponies are blinded in the sunlight but, down in the pit, the ponies can
see in the dark.
And the ponies pull the coal around like slaves, and for their night they
rest in peace.

Whilst the pits are obviously gone, the tradition is not entirely lost and
the culture is preserved by bands like 'The Whisky Priests' (1996), a young group
from Sherburn village, though they are admittedly an exception to the general rule:

'This village draws me,
I hear it calling me back through the years.
Its people are its life-blood,
I am its joy, I am its tears ...

This village haunts me,
Its whispering hurt tears at my soul.
Oh why did I forsake you?
Welcome me back, welcome me home.

A sacred bond exists here
Between the land and the people it owns.
It grants no escape from the realms of its fate,
It reaps the crops we have sown.

This village has made me all that I am
This village is calling me home.'

A sense of place, of Northumbrian roots, is also crucial to an understanding
of the life and work of Tyneside's famous son, wood-engraver Thomas Bewick
(1753-1828). It is particularly evident in Bewick's Memoir (1979):

'Well do I remember to this day, my father's well known Whistle which called
me home - he went to a little distance from the House, where nothing
obstructed the sound, and whistled so loud through his finger and thumb -
that in the still hours of the Evening, it might be heard echoing up the
vale of the Tyne to a very great distance...
From the little window at my bed-stead, I noticed all the varying seasons
of the year, and when the spring put in, I felt charmed with the music of
the birds, which strained their little throats to proclaim it'.

All of these impressions greatly influenced the art of Bewick. This is also
true of the people he grew up with, who gave him a sense of tradition and
common learning:

'The Winter evenings were often spent in listening to the traditionary Tales
and Songs, relating to Men who had been eminent for their prowess and
bravery in the Border Wars, and of others who had been esteemed for better
and milder qualities, such as having been good Landlords, kind Neighbours,
and otherwise in every respect being bold, independent and honest Men. I
used to be particularly struck or affected with the Warlike music and the
Songs. These Songs and laments were commemorative of many worthies, but the
most particular ones that I now remember were those respecting the Earl of
Derwent-Water, who was beheaded in the year 1715...
These cottagers were of an honest and independent character ... most of
these poor Men, from their having little intercourse with the World, were in
all their actions and behaviour truly original - except reading the Bible,
local Histories and old Ballads, their knowledge was generally limited - and
yet one of these, "Will Bewick", from being much struck with my performance
which he called Pictures, became exceedingly kind to me, and was the first
person from whom I gathered a kind of general knowledge of Astronomy and of
the Magnitude of the universe. He had, the Year through, noticed the
appearance of the stars and the Planets and would discourse largely on the
subject. I think I see him yet, sitting on a mound or seat, by the Hedge of
his Garden, regardless of the cold, and intent upon the heavenly bodies,
pointing to them with his large hands and eagerly imparting his knowledge to
me, with a strong voice.'

Bewick is a key figure in the 'Geordie' heritage. Indeed, given that he died
in Gateshead, an image of him and his work might have been more appropriate
on the 'Gateway' site now occupied by 'The Angel of the North'. He worked in
Newcastle when it was the most important printing centre in England outside
London, Oxford and Cambridge, with twenty printers in the town, publishing
more books than any other provincial city, including 'songs and schoolbooks,
histories and sermons, works in all shapes and sizes, as well as Bewick's
'Quadrupeds' and 'Birds'. (Brewer, J., 1997).
This active publishing trade was backed up by a thriving cultural and social life
represented by 'nearly fifty clubs and societies, ranging from masonic
lodges to floral societies, from debating clubs to political associations,
[which] met in coffee houses, club rooms and taverns ... In 1778 Bewick was
elected to Swarley's Club, which met at the Black Boy Inn ... [and] he also
spent time with members of a literary club 'who kept a library of Books and
held their meetings in a Room at Sam Allcocks, at the Sign of the Cannon, at
the foot of the old Flesh Market'. The society, which included some woollen
drapers and the cashier of a local bank, may have served as the model for
the Philosophical Society that Bewick, together with a bookseller, land
surveyor, coach painter, engineers and dissenting minister, founded in the
1770s to debate literature, philosophy and politics ... The bookplate of
Richard Swarley proudly declaimed 'Libertas Auro Pretiosior' (Liberty is
more precious than gold); government spies broke up the club because of its
radical, oppositional views during the Napoleonic Wars. The first occasion
on which the radical bookseller and numismatist Thomas Spence set forth his
views on the collective right to rural property was at a meeting of the
Philosophical Society [from which he was later expelled - K.A.]. His
agrarian socialism was controversial and Bewick, who was a firm believer in
the virtues of private property, disliked it. On one occasion their
differences led to a fight with cudgels in which the strongly built engraver
gave the slender radical a terrible drubbing. But they remained friends
throughout their lives. Bewick visited Spence after he had left Newcastle,
and the Bewick-Beilby workshop gave Spence the tools and type he needed to
publish his new and simplified alphabet.' (Brewer, J., 1997).

Bewick and his associates were asserting a collectivist vision from a
regionalist perspective and were not interested in merely aping London
fashions. They 'directly challenged any presumption that only gentlemen
could be cultured and refined'. The Newcastle Literary and Philosophical
Society was established in the belief that, 'Knowledge, like fire, is
brought forth by collision; and in the free conversations of associated
friends many lights have been struck out, and served as tin for the most
important discoveries, which would not, probably, have occurred to their
authors, in the refinements of private meditation'. (Brewer, J., 1997).

Aware of the kind of tradition which inspired Bewick, Alan Plater has this
to say:

'On the whole, born as we are from generations of disenfranchised voices,
Geordie writers live easily enough with their ragbag of realities. The mere
fact that we are able to write and see our work performed without being in
hock to the Bloomsbury/Oxbridge axis, is awesome enough. On the whole, we
are not cursed with Art in the Head. We see ourselves as makers,
conscientious craftsmen who happen to be writers, just as our fathers
happened to be railwaymen, shipbuilders or pitmen ... What we share, to
borrow an idea from Sid Chaplin, is love of place and love of work. The
shipyards and the coalfield, hideous as the conditions were, nevertheless
created a lasting respect for the craft tradition, linked to the notion of
community interdepdendence. Both of these traditions have suffered
grievously during the 1980s, kicked almost to death by the bovver boots of
Thatcherism. What survives is the possibility of love, and that survival
depends in large measure on the writers ... Memory becomes history becomes
legend ... In the North East, we have long memories and a massive burden of
history ... an oral tradition, starting in childhood, hardended by inherited
rage and love ... our stories should be dream-driven, not market-driven and
they should be stories that in one form or another were first heard in a
back yard, once upon a time.' (Plater, A., 1992).

The American broadcaster and oral historian Studs Terkel, whose books based
on the recollections of 'so-called ordinary people' have chronicled American
history since the Depression, recently attacked what he referred to as a
'national Alzheimer's disease'. 'One of the things failing us today', he
said, 'is the elimination of the past, of history. Some of the kids don't
know about the sixties, let alone world war two, let alone the depression'.
In speech, 'he described lambasting a couple for failing to appreciate their
forebears' sacrifices, and insisted people could change once they were
educated'. (Terkel, S., 11/6/98).

It is the belief which underpins the Strong Words and Northern Voices
projects, the kind of belief which motivated North East writers like Jack
Common and Sid Chaplin; a belief which is not quite dead, for, in Chaplin's
words:

'There are a few people in my life who represent more than father-figures.
They are rocks you can strike any time and get living water, trees under
whose mighty branches you can shelter - and the fruit and blossom are
constantly there, elemental beings whose voice you can hear at any time.
This is not an explanation but a statement - how it happens is a mystery -
but once met they become part of your psyche. There is no need to call up
their ghosts. They live on in you.' (Chaplin, S., 1989).
This attempt to keep some kind of cultural heritage alive, led Strong
Words to stage exhibitions and events in honour of Jack Common, and to
publish 'Revolt Against an Age of Plenty' (1980), a selection of his
essays, and, subsequently, to establish the enterprise 'The Common Trust'
with the aim of keeping Common's spirit alive and to ensure that his writing
was published and still available ('Freedom of the  Streets', People's
Publications and The Common Trust, London, 1988). For the values he stood
for still carry some weight: the exploration of ideas of community in an
increasingly individualistic society, the regard for a sense of history and
place in our lives (in some ways, encapsulated in the city of Newcastle upon
Tyne), the love of fallible humanity, the bringing together of kindred
spirits to talk, celebrate and sing, the need to analyse and articulate our
thoughts and feelings, all of these things and more.
An exhibition in 1977 at Newcastle's Central Library as part of that year's
City Festival, set the ball rolling and stimulated a large degree of
interest, further developed by an evening at the Tyneside Cinema where
Common's wartime film 'Tyneside  Story' was shown and supplemented by a talk
by renowned Durham novelist Sid Chaplin on his association with Common.
Common's old friend Tommy McCulloch attended as did his son, Peter Common.
The aim was to bring people together across generations to celebrate Common
and his links with his home city.

Times have, of course, moved on. The ideas of Common and of the Strong
Words Collective need to be viewed in this light. 'There is no
counter-culture now.' (Newcastle artist George French, 2001). Just what can
be retained of value in the present context and into the future it is, in
part, the role of this thesis to explore.
The use of the word 'community' now has a hollow ring. The traditional
organised industrial trade union movement has been splintered. The
international 'communist' movement has been dealt a body blow. The ''global
market' seems triumphant. And do the terms 'socialism' and 'working class'
have any meaning any more? Recently, Jonathan Rose asked at the end of his
'Intellectual Life of the Working Classes' (2001) why 200 years of cultural
self-improvement through libraries, lectures, schools and newspapers
organised by and for the working class died in the 1960s. He concluded that
the alleged egalitarian attack on the 'dead white men' of the classics
actually enhanced the privilege of the middle-classes. If there was common
agreement on what the canon was, be it Shakespeare or its ilk, it was easy
enough for the self-taught to make up the ground. But, since the 1960s,
cultural trends have had 'as brief a shelf-life as stock-exchange trends,
and they depreciate rapidly if one fails to catch the latest wave in
architecture of literary theory'. 'The new waves (be it 'new
wave', 'modernist' or 'postmodernist')', argues Rose, 'reflect the Anxiety of
Cool, the relentless struggle to get out in front and control the new
production of new cultural information'.

And as Nick Cohen (2005) concludes, 'each new wave carries
high culture further away from the working class. Once, the middle class
left saw the workers as the very vanguard of history; now they are dismissed
as sexist, racist and conservative'.

Rose searched a database of academic texts published betweem 1991 and 2000.
There were 13,820 references for 'women', 4,539 for 'gender', 1,826 for
'race', 710 for 'post-colonial' and only 136 for 'working class'. As Cohen
comments:

'It shouldn't be too great a surprise that the humble do not care
about education and that they regard intellectual life as alien when the
educated care so little for them.'

Jack Common might well be turning in his grave.
What once seemed a class that through its liberation and self-education
would rise up and change the world now seems locked into the
trap of the sink estate and the intellectually starved world of a bemused
underclass. So is there any hope? I say there has to be.

Researching the life of Edinburgh's Robert Louis Stevenson recently, I was
made aware of, if I wasn't before, the dualities of the man and of his
beloved home city. One of the greatest inspirations of 'RLS' was the
eighteenth century Edinburgh poet Robert Fergusson, a man 'who lived without
restraint and who wrote about the real life of the city, about ordinary
people, servant girls gossiping on the tenement stairs, dandies getting
splashed in the filthy streets, drunks staggering home at night' (Calder,
1980). Not so far removed from Common's own Kiddar's Luck, you might say,
and Fergusson lived from 1750 to 1774, parallelling the lives of Newcastle's
own radicals Thomas Bewick and Thomas Spence.
RLS himself as a young man mixed with those beyond the reach of the law and
the establishment as an alternative to the manners and morals of the middle
classes.
'Edinburgh certainly fed his imagination ... a city where still the
past is never allowed to lie down and die, where in his everyday comings and
goings he could not avoid the continual stimulus of the sombre outline on
the ridge, castle, cathedral, kirks and uneven lands, or the sound of bugles
and drums drifting down in the evening, and the mingling with lines from
those authors who had already captured something of the city.' (Calder, J., 1980).

This duality of dark and light in Edinburgh is reflected in all cities. In
Edinburgh's case it is visible in
the culture of the body-snatchers Burke and Hare, in Stevenson's own Jekyll
and Hyde, in the thief and magistrate Deacon Brodie and, above all, in the old
and new towns of the city, which did not get its name 'auld Reekie' for nothing.
That Fergusson and RLS, along with the likes of Robbie Burns and  James
Hogg, give a city like Edinburgh historical depth cannot be denied. So much
so that the city is now a UNESCO World City of Literature and a novelist
like Ian Rankin carries on this tradition by setting his Inspector Rebus
stories in the city.
Without a sense of such heritage, a grasp of the light and shade which
reveals the truth, our cities would be breathing corpses. This is why it is
important to remember Jack Common and his evocative writing rooted in the
streets and lanes of Newcastle where, like Edinburgh, the past refuses to
'lie down and die' and which must reveal its dark side, alongside the glitz
of the cultural admen, to any writer worth his bottle of brown.

New Publication from University of Sunderland Press: 

Common Words and the Wandering Star 

by Keith Armstrong 

Introductory Offer £5.95 

In this unique book, Keith Armstrong assesses the life and work of

Newcastle born writer Jack Common, in the light of the massive social,

economic and cultural changes which have affected the North East of

England and wider society, through the period of Common’s life and

afterwards.

He seeks to point out the relevance of Common to the present day in

terms of his ideas about class, community and the individual and in the

light of Common’s sense of rebelliousness influenced by a process of

grassroots education and self improvement.

“Keith Armstrong's study of Jack Common is a major contribution to

contemporary studies in English literature. 
This is a well-informed book with many innovative characteristics, 
including the author's use of poetry as a way of exploring Common's creativity.”

Professor Bill Williamson 

____________________________

doctor keith armstrong archive at university of durham

the archive contains copies of over 300 items relating to armstrong's publishing activities over a period of almost 40 years, including 'poetry north east', the magazine of the tyneside poets.


http://library.dur.ac.uk/search/c?SEARCH=Armstrong&SUBMIT=Search

Arresting Orator

Only walking sticks,
Nothing that might be construed offensive
Other than words, and then only because
Being stridently reasonable renders deaf
All with a stake in not being able to hear.
Such interest in profound silence of tongues
Wraps reason in barbed wire, crucifies words
Along rough cross members of watch towers,
Ends sentences with bullets as full stops.
Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear
Before there’s cold steel, keen enough to slice
Ears clean off. Or make precise incisions
To surgically remove the aggressive
Malignancy, diagnosed as likely
To devour the body politic. So,
The yeomanry, sabres drawn, intent on
Riding down veterans and civilians
While the magisterial from high up
In their vantage point, consider themselves
Justified in issuing the order,
Arresting orator, crowd being armed
Only with sticks.
                                            Dave Alton

MAN OF MUSIC IN PAXTON

(For Gary)

There’s a man in Paxton

who is researching stars

and that musical telescope of his

stares out of the village window

to pierce a broader darkness.

There is a universal symphony in his breath,

picked up from the folk whistling

in the rain-kissed street.

There’s a child singing across the borders

and the sky is a chorus

of screaming clouds.

Our man of music in Paxton

scratches notes as he opens his mind.

He calls out

under the leaping rainbow

for a song to enter 

his soul.

He wants to name a star after his wife.

He wants to write Jane a song.

There is nothing more beautiful than the sight of Space:

‘Nothing more terrible than the beauty of music’, he says.

And, while his songs are soaring to the stars,

in the name of his radiant life,

he knows his Dad’s bones are cracking with age

and he knows there are days

when his guitar will sob

in the village darkness.

But, tonight, he has named a star ‘Jane’

and, while life is forever such struggle,

he has written a lovely song in Paxton

and taught his son Archie to dance in the sky.

Keith Armstrong

For Remembrance Day

          YPRES QUARTET

                    (1)
By Menin Gate I hear the bugle blow
And wonder, should the call come would I go,
Knowing what none of these chiselled here could know
Before they were cheered as they volunteered,
Charging through No Man’s Land, and disappeared?
For I’m of a generation that’s crass
Enough to claim, in youth, “Life is a gas!”
And think myself ill served if fickle fate
Means my coffee’s cold or my bus runs late.
How, for those boys of puttees and dubbing,
Different the invitation to go clubbing,
And come the weekend they’d all get slaughtered:
Careless of the future, bellies bloated!
No troop train for me though, it’s Euro Star,
Seat reserved in an air-conditioned car,
Speeding with a whisper, travelling at ease:
No smoking and a seat near the front please.

                    (2)
I hear the bugle blow by Menin Gate,
And stand silently beneath the dread weight
Of all those huge, right-dressed blocks of limestone.
Could each be a cube of compounded bone
Engraved with names of all who surrendered
Life so comprehensively they ended
Their brief span with nothing else to show?
Except all who assemble here, they know
The value of a life is not bound
Up in a mess of flesh, a body found.
Nine decades later and what would we do?
Build a solemn memorial? Or sue
Someone for starting a shooting match
Without risk assessment? The safety catch!

                    (3)
At Langemarck the final bugle has blown,
Such sombre notes set into field-grey stone
Tablets laid in serried regular ranks.
So many students released from their pranks
And classrooms to lie after final games
Beneath these bleak plaques gilded with their names.
At least those who, having been overthrown,
Still had enough about them to be known.
Yet many more being so shell tossed
They were simply expunged, forever lost.
Their names etched on blocks around a pit
Of body parts collected bit by bit
And beyond recognition. Some bone there
For everyone, and with a few to spare
That maybe enfeebled history forgot,
Or perhaps belong in some enemy plot.
Far too many salting this Flanders’ earth
Where I stand never having proven my worth.

                    (4)
As I await the Last Post’s plaintive wail
It seems there are Germans in Passchendaele,
Visiting the cheese museum. In truth,
How might they do justice to their fallen youth
Who no doubt volunteered, fought, fell and died,
With no lack of fervour, courage or pride.
And, perhaps, they too for their mothers cried
Just one brief final time. 64A,
Ieper to Passendale, making its steady way,
Hourly service from the Cloth Market square,
And takes three and a half months to get there.
What a bloody journey, but those who stick it
Arrive back on a two-day return ticket.
Such a bloody journey! As I’ve wandered
Around Salient points, was life squandered,
I’ve thought, extinguished in vain? To believe so
Is to lose them all again, let them go
From History. Why recall fools who dared fight
And die? Simpletons believing in right
And wrong, prepared to make a difference.
I stand by the Menin Gate: such immense
Sacrifice I’ve never been asked to make
And could not bear it to be a mistake
If it had to be me before the guns,
Or so finely hewn a name was my son’s.
Too many names for one to count and yet
Together they amount to such a great debt.
As the buglers parade my conscience says,
“Commit to remembrance!” The Last Post plays.
                                                      Dave Alton

Art

Naming the colours;
It’s a question of tall men
And attitudes they strike,
Or deep valleys
With an absence of greed.
There is a wine glass
Half full of cochineal
Atop a basalt boulder,
There is a bicycle
With one pedal
And a flat tyre.
Moorland is interminable,
Grass countless.
Who can know why some folk
Speak secretly to bridges,
More openly
To supermarket trolleys?
Branch reaching out,
Road to infinity
Merging
In the second third,
Pixels
Making suggestions
Like shards
Of shattering photons,
Like
A scatter of jelly beans.
There are shades
Expectantly beneath easels,
Pencils
Not drawing attention to themselves,
Wax crayons
Relieved not to be tallow
And oils
Too refined for workshops.
Last night,
In bed, on the floor,
An inspired solitude,
A celibate
Exploration of flesh,
Of contours,
Of endless waves on endless oceans.
Canvas is not blank,
A palimpsest
Of dreams and patronage
Only 3D specs
Might reveal.
Sauvignon blanc
In a schooner
Set
On a Victorian schoolmaster’s desk
With an umbrella,
With a urinal
And
A sewing machine.

Cryo

There is an iceberg in the oven,
The hob has frozen hard,
Wine bottles filled with decanted sighs,
Tears buried in the yard.

Trees shedding all their leaves in springtime,
A statue on the lawn
Is weeping sand precisely because
The moon will rise at dawn.

A moon that shines on separate sheets,
A moon to bind the dead,
A moon estimating absences,
The anger and the dread.

Strum the old guitar with a scalpel,
Incise lyrics on glass,
A choir of lawyers sing the anthem,
The tune is from a mass.

Once nakedness becomes meaningless
And eye to eye being blind,
There is only silence and shadows,
Only the loss to find.

The saxophone has laryngitis,
Even the devil sleeps,
So, when no one meets at the crossroads
A wraith quietly creeps.

Tongues, having been salted with ashes,
Cannot recant their vows,
Ears stopped by indifference ring with
Songs of unspoken rows.

There’s a glacier in the hallway,
Avalanche on the stairs,
Icicle becomes a stiletto,
The assassin despairs.

Absolution

Fresh faced visions
Lie abandoned in sock drawers
While wings
Meticulously unpicked
From backs of angels
Hang flaccidly
Behind the bedroom door
One hook along
From the red suit
Worn by the hobgoblin
That once stalked Europe.

Dave Alton