NEWCASTLE IS PICARDY

Grainger Street hums

and bakes

in the peeling sunshine;

this walled, world weary city

adopts a certain Latin glow:

car drivers swear more brilliantly,

girls giggle louder

and trap my eyes

in the flash

of their hair.

The world is simply

passing us by.

And who cares,

in this haze

of a burning Empire?

So long as

the sunbeams 

swim

in our beer

and the roses

are blooming

in Picardy.

Keith Armstrong

SPLINTERS

(FOR MY FATHER)

You picked splinters

with a pin each day

from under blackened fingernails;

shreds of metal

from the shipyard grime,

minute memories of days swept by:

the dusty remnants of a life

spent in the shadow of the sea;

the tears in your shattered eyes

at the end of work.

And your hands were strong,

so sensitive and capable 

of building boats

and nursing roses;

a kind and gentle man

who never hurt a soul,

the sort of quiet knackered man

who built a nation.

Dad, I watched your ashes float away

down to the ocean bed

and in each splinter

I saw your caring eyes

and gracious smile.

I think of your strong silence every day

and I am full of you,

the waves you scaled,

and all the sleeping Tyneside streets

you taught me to dance my fleeting feet along.

When I fly, you are with me.

I see your fine face

in sun-kissed clouds

and in the gold ring on my finger,

and in the heaving crowd on Saturday,

and in the lung of Grainger Market,

and in the ancient breath

of our own Newcastle.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

aa went ti blaydon races!

photo: peter dixon

MINING WORLD

OLD NEWCASTLE

HERITAGE OPEN DAYS: OLD NEWCASTLE

Sunday 15th September 12-3pm, Castle Keep, Newcastle – hear poetry inspired by Old Newcastle written and performed by local poet Keith Armstrong accompanied by piper Ann Sessoms.

JOSEPH SKIPSEY: PITMAN POET (1832 -1903)

HERITAGE OPEN DAYS 2013.

NORTH EAST ODES AND PIT POEMS.

Thursday September 12th 2013 7.30pm in the Red House, Sandhill, Quayside, Newcastle. Poetry and folk music event featuring poems and songs about Newcastle and the North East, with an open mic session combined with a Joseph Skipsey ('The Pitman Poet of Percy Main', 1832-1903) anniversary celebration featuring: readings by and about Skipsey by Keith Armstrong, Catherine Graham, Dave Alton and Steve Brown, settings of Skipsey's poems sung by his great great grandson Chris Harrison, songs by folk group 'Kiddar's Luck' and by Whitby's Tony Morris, with a set from Ann Sessoms on Northumbrian Pipes.

NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS presents:

THE PITMAN POET OF PERCY MAIN ― An event to mark the 110th anniversary of the death of Joseph Skipsey (1832-1903), the Pitman Poet of Percy Main. Featuring new settings of Skipsey's poems by great great grandson Chris Harrison, including his famous Hartley Calamity ballad, with readings from 'Still The Sea Rolls On', the recent NVCP Hartley commemorative book, by local poets and by Whitley Bay poet Keith Armstrong who also reads a selection from Skipsey, together with his own new poems on Skipsey and on Edward Elliot of Earsdon, the stonemason for the Hartley Memorial as well as a local people's poet. Also featuring a performance of the New Hartley Pit Disaster song (Brothers, Sons and Dads) by The Sawdust Jacks and The St Alban's Church Choir and Ann Sessoms from Shiremoor on Northumbrian Pipes.

Performed at the Hartley Memorial, Earsdon Churchyard on Saturday 14th September 11am to 12 noon (in St Alban's Church, Earsdon, in the event of bad weather).

The Northern Voices Community Projects' display about the Hartley Calamity of 1862 will also be on display in the church on the day.