POETRY TYNESIDE LINKS WITH POETRY NEW ZEALAND

"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

DIARY DATES

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

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

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