I
have worked with local poet, Keith Armstrong, off-and-on for a number
of years, playing at poetry festivals, for visitors from foreign
parts, at launches of Keith’s publications, and on occasions where
he had been asked to read his poetry. Early on we experimented with
combining pipes with Keith’s poetry; one project was to find tunes
for Keith’s poems about Jamie Allen. I also realised that Keith’s
“Song for Northumberland” could be sung to the official
Northumberland County tune, “Northumberland Air”. The Jamie
Allen poems were originally written for a touring show, O’er
the Hills,
by
Northumberland Touring Company. Original music was written by Rick
Taylor and played by Kathryn Tickell. Keith and I performed the
poems at The Maltings in Berwick and recorded them for his CD, Out
to Sea. Poetry and Music from Northumbria,
produced
by Northern Voices. More recently I have provided musical interludes
during poetry events rather than play along with the poems.
These
events have mostly taken place in and around Newcastle – The Red
House on Newcastle Quayside, St James’ Park, The Lit and Phil, The
Centurion Bar at Central Station, St Mary’s Lighthouse in Whitley
Bay, The Grand Hotel in Tynemouth, The Oak in Edinburgh, and the
University of Durham, among others. Twice I have been abroad with
Keith. At the end of April 2012 Keith and I travelled to Ireland to
help launch the Fermoy International Poetry Competition. We were
made very welcome in Fermoy at Murphy’s, otherwise known as the
Elbow Lane Inn, and Keith made the short list. I was unable to
accept an invitation to return for the finals of the competition at
the beginning of August. I have also not been in a position to
accept invitations to Prague.
An
invitation that I did accept was to the Netherlands in December 1998.
We flew from Newcastle to Amsterdam and then caught a train to
Groningen, which is twinned with Newcastle upon Tyne. There we took
part in Nachtspraak at Muziekcafé Koekkoek. The following day we
visited two schools and then headed for Den Helder and De Blicksem
pub. The other performances were at Studentencafé Nobel in Delft
and de Koos in The Hague, in which the décor included stuffed swans.
Accommodation was in homes of the organisers and of a fellow poet,
who had the most interesting home. He lived in an official squat in
a former government building in The Hague. He was in Newcastle
reading his poems, and I was provided with a mattress in his office –
Keith stayed on a houseboat in Amsterdam and travelled down for the
gig. It was a very interesting experience, and I certainly saw
places that I wouldn’t have visited as a tourist.
I
like to play my pipes for different audiences and also enjoy
listening to poetry, so I hope to continue participating in Keith’s
events and taking Northumbrian small pipes to new audiences.
Ann Sessoms
(Northumbrian Pipers' Society Newsletter 2012)
