the waters of tyne

REMEMBER REMEMBER!

KICKING OFF WITH A BANG!

A MANIFESTO FOR NORTHUMBRIA - 

OFFICIAL LAUNCH AT THE OLD GEORGE, CLOTH MARKET, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE. ADMISSION  FREE. MONDAY 5TH NOVEMBER 7.30PM.

READINGS FROM THE NEW MANIFESTO BY DR KEITH ARMSTRONG & BRIAN HALL.

WITH NORTH EAST CULTURAL POETRY BY DR ARMSTRONG.

SPECIAL GUESTS - POETS GUY HUDSON (FROM LINCOLN) AND TREVOR LONSDALE.

ANN SESSOMS ON NORTHUMBRIAN PIPES AND FOLK SONGS BY 'KIDDAR'S LUCK' AND GARY MILLER.

TEL. NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS 0191 2529531 FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

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

TELL ME LIES ABOUT NORTHUMBERLAND

(in honour of Adrian Mitchell)

Say this land is ours, 

these pipe-tunes do not cry. 

The birds all sing in dialect,

old miners breathe like dukes.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

Tell me it isn’t feudal,

that castles were built for us.

We never touch the forelock,

bend to scrape up dust.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

Your pretty girls don’t stink of slaughter,

your eyes don’t blur with myth.

You’re as equal as a duchess,

saints never smell of piss.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

Your roots are in this valley,

you were never from doon south.

You never hide your birthplace,

you’re a real poet of the north.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

The churches are not crumbling,

the congregations glow with hope.

We are different from the foreigner,

our poetry rhymes with wine. 

Tell me lies about Northumberland. 

There is no landed gentry,

no homes locals can’t afford.

There’s no army on the moors,

the Romans freed us all.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

That the hurt is in the past,

the future holds no war.

Home rule is at our fingertips,

the Coquet swims with love.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.  

‘The Garden’ is our children’s,

Hotspur spurs us on.

The seagulls are not soaked in oil,

the cows are not diseased.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

This Kingdom is United,

‘Culture’ is our God. 

Everyone’s a Basil Bunting freak,

there’s music everywhere.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

We will have our independence,

we’ll get the Gospels back.

We live off museums and tourists,

we don’t need boats or trades.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

We’re in charge of our own futures,

we have north east citizens here.

In this autonomous republic,

we’re free as dicky birds.

So shut your eyes.

And tell me lies 

about Northumberland.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

SONG FOR NORTHUMBERLAND

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.

Seaching 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.

Peel 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

ALSO FORTHCOMING:
Wednesday January 16th 2013 7.30pm.
Northern Voices Community Projects Annual Award event. Presentation of annual Northern Voices Community Projects Joseph Skipsey Award - and commemoration of the Hartley Pit Disaster with poems and songs. This event will also mark the 45th anniversary of the death of Newcastle writer Jack Common and the 110th of his birth, with readings from his works, poems and songs by local folk group 'Kiddar's Luck'.

Tuesday September 3rd 2013 7.30pm.
Northern Voices Community Projects. A special event to mark the 110th anniversary of the death of pitman poet Joseph Skipsey (1832-1903) with songs and readings.

Events held at Mining Institute, Westgate Road, Newcastle

WILLIAM BLAKE IN THE BRIDGE HOTEL

A few pints of Deuchars and my spirit is soaring.

The child dances out of me,

goes running down to the Tyne,

while the little man in me wrestles with a lass

and William Blake beams all his innocence in my glass.

And the old experience sweats from a castle’s bricks

as another local prophet takes a jump off the bridge.

It’s the spirit of Pat Foley and the ancient brigade

on the loose down the Quayside stairs

in a futile search,

just a step in the past,

for one last revolutionary song.

All the jars we have supped

in the hope of a change;

all the flirting and courting and chancing downstream;

all the words in the air and the luck pissed away.

It seems we oldies are running back

screaming to the Bewick days,

when a man could down a politicised quip

and craft a civilised chat

before he fed the birds

in the Churchyard.

The cultural ships are fair steaming in

but it’s all stripped of meaning -

the Councillors wade

in the shallow end.

O Blake! buy me a pint in the Bridge again,

let it shiver with sunlight

through all the stained windows,

make my wit sparkle

and my knees buckle.

Set me free of this stifling age

when the bland are back in charge.

Let us grow our golden hair wild once more

and roar like Tygers

down Dog Leap Stairs.

KEITH ARMSTRONG    

Departing Tyneside

 

 

I arrived upon Tyneside when

Last orders was still half past ten,

When slipways hadn’t yet slipped away

Or mines been undermined. By day

The Quayside was grim, by night worse,

Except on the Sabbath, God’s curse

On commerce relaxed by hawkers,

Barrow boys and other jokers

With market stalls. The day before

Would have been SuperMac, the roar

Of the Leazes End, just a year

On from Mexico and the clear

Refrain…

“Ey, ey, ey, ey,

Someone has pinched my sombrero,

The dirty twat

Has pissed on my hat,

And now I’ve got nothing to wearo, wearo, wearo…”

Then it was Haymarket, Hotspur,

Farmers Rest, Brown Ale or Amber,

The first time shock of being offered

A pint of scotch. T Dan occurred

And Newcastle was up for change,

Loose change in pockets of a range

Of speculators. Local feelings

Losing out to opaque dealings,

“The fog on the Tyne

Is all mine, all mine,

Fog on the Tyne is all mine.”

But always there was poetry,

In pubs and clubs the verse set free,

Falling from the backs of lorries,

Carried on the breeze through the trees

Of Leazes Park, Exhibition

Park or any park the mission

Could be declaimed. Those were nights of

Open reading; of the heights of

Prosody we were the steeple

Jacks: Poetry to the People!

Then freewheeling fine thoughts were dished

And the seventies abolished

By the Iron Lady.

“You can’t touch me I’m part of the union,

You can’t touch me I’m part of the union,

You can’t touch me I’m part of the union,

Till the day I die, till the day I die.”

                                    Two score years

And more when necessity steers

Me away: the union is broken.

Time, like stanzas soon as spoken,

Passes. The Great North Road also

Drives south, four full counties below

Where Akenside and Spence left as well;

The High Level and Bridge Hotel,

St. James’ Park (at last) restored,

Morden Tower largely ingnored

And Tescopolis, where it’s said

There once stood the town of Gateshead.

Central Station announcers sing,

The poet now departing…

 

                                                                        Dave Alton

JUMPING JAMIE!

The poems below were written by Keith Armstrong for a touring show ‘O’er the Hills’ by Northumberland Theatre Company in 1988, recounting the life of Northumbrian Piper, Jamie Allan (1734-1810), and based on an original idea by Armstrong.

The show featured Armstrong in performance with associate writer Graeme Rigby together with  musicians Kathryn Tickell, on Northumbrian Pipes, Rick Taylor, on trombone, Paul Flush on keyboards, Keith Morris on vocals and saxophone and Joan McKay on vocals, with original music by Taylor, Flush and Tickell.

JUMPING JAMIE!

A mischievous man you might say

but with beauty did he play,

with his wee fingers

tripping

over songs.

When he piped,

the rivers and girls came

running.

The world danced

when Jamie drooled

on his lance.

Yes, when Jamie smoked,

the salmon

leapt in his pipes.

A bit of a lad and bad

but oh what a way he had;

with the fish

and his hands leaping,

he set the salmon and some women 

jumping:

Jumping Jamie!

Home your heart

in your hymns,

your wild Northumbrian hymns -

Jumping Jamie!

Home your heart.

JAMIE LIVES!

I see him.

Everytime I see

the Coquet,

I see him.

Everytime

I walk

the Cheviots,

I sense his voice.

I hear him

in the Curlew;

I hear Jamie

in the wind.

His tunes

haunt me still;

his wandering fingers

ripple through

the grass.

His tunes splash

across the river,

skim

in me.

IN THE YOUNG DAYS

In the young days,

I swam,

dipped in the River Coquet.

Along the banks I ran,

shouting for the sun.

In all wild flowers,

I’d lie,

picking out such scent,

jinking jaunty amongst sheep,

dancing for my keep.

Now by the Ganges I walk,

the evening streaming blood;

such wanders through a different land,

such songs of our dead brothers.

In the scale of things I am

but a small fish abroad;

all rivers flow together,

all wonders outlive man.

Jamie Allen I,

piper by the sea;

notes flow inside me,

streams flow by.

OUTCLASSED*

I never really knew my station,

my destination.

I was restless,

yearning.

Could never settle

for second best.

Yet I was

consistently

outclassed.

Ending my days

dingily alone,

stripped of illusions

and riddled

with humility.

My ego starved,

my regal palate fed

on bread

and Coquet water.

*performed by Mike Tickell on the Kathryn Tickell album ‘Common Ground’ (1988)

FOOTNOTE:

Jamie Allan, the most renowned inhabitant of the House of Correction, Elvet Bridge, was born of gypsy parentage near Rothbury in the 1730s and his accomplishment on the Northumbrian pipes earned him recognition from the Duchess of Northumberland. 

He became resident at Alnwick but misbehaved and lost her favour. Subsequently he led a remarkable and irresponsible itinerant life throughout Europe, Asia and Africa but on his return was convicted in 1803 at Durham Assizes of horse stealing, and condemned to death. This sentence was later commuted to transportation but, probably due to his advanced age and poor health, this last journey was not enforced and he spent the remaining seven years of his life in the House of Correction. This is the building where Hollathan's is now housed. 

He died in 1810 on the day before the Prince Regent granted him a free pardon. It is said that his ghost wanders the dank, dark cells and that the plaintive sound of his pipes can sometimes be heard. 

No Wonder! What greater punishment to a wandering gypsy than this? Even his request to be buried in his native Rothbury went unheeded and he was interred in St. Nicholas' Churchyard, now part of Durham's busy Market Place. 

BOOKINGS: Contact Northern Voices Community Projects tel 0191 2529531 if you are interested in booking the new ‘Jumping Jamie!’ show.