SHOTS FROM BURNS NIGHT SPECIAL AT THE RED HOUSE, NEWCASTLE

photos by helen temperley

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBBIE BURNS!

THE DIVIDED SELF

‘When’er my muse does on me glance, I jingle at her.’  (Robert Burns).


Such an eye in a human head,
from the toothless baby
to the toothless man,
the Edinburgh wynds
bleed whisky.
Through all the Daft Days,
we drink and gree
in the local howffs,
dancing down
Bread Street.
Like burns with Burns
these gutters run;
where Fergusson once tripped,
his shaking glass
jumps
in our inky fingers,
delirium tugs
at our bardish tongues;
dead drunk,
we dribble down
a crafty double
for Burke & Hare,
heckle a Deacon Brodie
gibbering
on the end
of the hangman’s rope.

In all these great and flitting streets
awash with cadies,
this poet’s dust
clings
like distemper to our bones.
We’re walking through
the dark and daylight,
the laughs
and torture
of lost ideals.
Where is the leader of the mob Joe Smith,
that bowlegged cobbler
who snuffed it on these cobbles,
plunging
from this stagecoach pissed?
Where is the gold
of Jinglin’ George Heriot?
Is it in the sunglow on the Forth?
We’re looking for girls of amazing beauty
and whores of unutterable filth:
‘And in the Abbotsford
like gabbing asses
they scale the heights
of Ben Parnassus.’

Oh Hugh me lad
we’ve seen some changes.
In Milne’s, your great brow scowls the louder;
your glass of bitterness
deep as a loch:
‘Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun.’

Oh Heart
of Midlothian,
it spits on
to rain
still hopes.
Still hope in her light meadows
and in her volcanic smiles.
And we’ve sung with Hamish
in Sandy Bell’s
and Nicky Tams
and Diggers,
a long hard sup
along the cobbles
to the dregs
at the World’s End:
‘Whene’er my muse does on me glance,
I jingle at her.’

Bright as silver,
sharp as ice,
this Edinburgh of all places,
home to a raving melancholia
among the ghosts
of Scotland’s Bedlam:
‘Auld Reekie’s sons blythe faces’,
shades of Fergusson in Canongate.

And the blee-e’ed sun,
the reaming ale
our hearts to heal;
the muse of Rose Street
seeping through us boozy bards,
us snuff snorters
in coughing clouds.

Here
on display
in this Edinburgh dream:
the polished monocle
of Sydney Goodsir Smith,
glittering by
his stained inhaler;
and the black velvet jacket
of RLS,
slumped by
a battered straw hat.

And someone
wolf whistles
along Waterloo Place;
and lovers
kiss moonlight
on Arthur’s Seat:
see Edinburgh rise.

Drink
from her eyes.




KEITH ARMSTRONG


(from Imagined Corners, Smokestack Books, 2004).

COMMENTS FROM THE BURNS NIGHT SPECIAL ON TUESDAY AT THE RED HOUSE:

That was a great event -- really good fun. You read well and held it together brilliantly. Ormston played beautifully. Gary sang his heart out. The Sawdust Jacks were good too, and everything moved along well. Everyone enjoyed themselves. Another triumph for Armstrong! (Katrina).


Enjoyed the evening.Thanks. Had not appreciated it was the first.
Thought it great to be able to assemble such a collection of gifted folks together
for such a worthwhile celebration. Good to be there and meet some friends too.
Great. Lets do it again.
Cheers,
Stuart

ROBERT GILCHRIST, TYNESIDE POET 1797-1844

Robert Gilchrist was born in St Mary’s Parish in Gateshead on 8th September 1797. His father was a sailmaker, part owner of Payne & Gilchrist sailmakers, before becoming head proprietor. After Robert finished school he was apprenticed to William Spence, sailmaker, before working in the family business.

Robert started writing poetry from a young age and found support in a thirving local community of poets, songsters and bards. He gained the friendship of Thomas Thompson (1773-1816), who was considered to be one of the finest and earliest Newcastle poets. Gilchrist was held in high regard. In 1818, at the age of 21, he received a silver medal from his companions in appreciation of his poetry. His special place amongst the community was recorded in the song ‘Thumping Luck to Yon Town’, by painter and politician William Watson. Watson notes Gilchrist’s “comic song” amidst the wit and humour of notable others such as Thompson and William Mitford.

A number of Gilchrist’s poems and songs were published, lending him a degree of local fame. Gilchrist's first book-length poem Gothalbert and Hisannawas published in 1822. In 1824 his Collection of Original Songs, Local and Sentimental was published by W.A. Mitchell. A second edition followed in the same year, with the title altered slightly to A Collection of Original Local Songs, and the addition of an extra poem, ‘The Loss of the Ovington’. Poems, a collection of eighty-four verses, followed in 1826 published by W. Boag. In all, Gilchrist’s published output of songs and poetry numbered over a hundred separate and original pieces, appearing in these collections and in the local press, including: The Newcastle Journal; Tyne Mercury;The Newcastle Courantand  Newcastle Magazine. Many of Gilchrist’s songs, drawn from his 1824 Collection of Original Songs, Local and Sentimental, upon which a biographer noted his fame largely rested, were republished in local anthologies in his own lifetime and beyond. These included: Fordyce's 1842 Newcastle Song Book, Joseph Robson's 1849 Songs of the Bards of the Tyne, Thomas Allan's 1862 Tyneside Songs and Readings and Joseph Crawhall’s 1888 A Beuk O’Newcassel Sangs. 

Upon the death of his father, John Gilchrist, in 1829, Robert took over his father's business near the Custom House on the Quayside. He was not successful in the business preferring the country and long walking tours. Gilchrist resided in the old house facing Shieldfield Green, reputed to have housed King Charles during the English Civil War as a prisoner of the Parliamentarians. In 1838 he wrote a poem 'The humble petition of the old house in the Shield Field' to Town Clerk Mr John Clayton Esq. complaining of plans which threatened to destroy this house. The house was spared. A memorial plaque stands on Shieldfield Green to commemorate the famous inhabitants of the house, which eventally succumbed to redevelopment in the 1960s.

Gilchrist had some involvement in local politics and must have had a degree of status in Tyneside. He was a freeman, a member of the Herbage Committee, which tended Newcastle's Town Moors, and took part in the annual Barge Day event, a local custom in which the Mayor and barges representing the Town's Guilds sailed the length of the Town Corporation's boundaries on the Tyne. Following the Poor Law Reforms of 1834 and the creation of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Poor Law Union in September 1836, Gilchrist was elected to the Board of Guardians, representing the All Saints' Parish. This role would have meant him adjudicating between deserving and undeserving poor, deciding on the fate of unfortunate individuals and families as they entered the newly constructed Newcastle Workhouse. He was involved in an inquiry into the controversial death of the pauper Elizabeth Graham in 1838; an event which garnered national press coverage.

Robert died on 11 July 1844 at the Old House in Shieldfield, aged 47, and was buried at the East Ballast Hills burial ground. The cause of death is given as a stomach cancer. John Luke Clennell, the son of the engraver and poet Luke Clennell (1781-1840), paid tribute to his old friend in the poem below, dated 16 July 1844:

                            If honest, manly, unpretending worth
                            May justly claim from us a tribute dear,
                            And those who were respected whilst on earth,
                            Deserve a passing dirge sung o’er their bier,
                            Then may I write me ROBERT GILCHRIST here.
                            No vain and empty words are these to tell
                            A tale of sorrow in an idle rhyme;
                            I knew the simple-hearted fellow well,
                            And felt his kindness also many a time.
                            Thus it is fitting memory should dwell
                            In pensive sadness on a man who gave
                            Good cause for us to sorrow o’er his grave,
                            And that the Muse bear record with a sigh,
                            When now it is the poet’s lot to die. 

Dr Paul Gilchrist

BURNS NIGHT SPECIAL IN NEWCASTLE

BURNS NIGHT SPECIAL IN NEWCASTLE

THERE WILL BE A BURNS NIGHT SPECIAL WITH POETRY AND MUSIC ON TUESDAY 23RD JANUARY 2018 7PM ONWARDS (START TIME 7.30 PM, ENDS 9.30 PM) IN THE RED HOUSE, QUAYSIDE, NEWCASTLE. ADMISSION FREE.

PERFORMERS ARE NORTHUMBRIAN PIPER CHRIS ORMSTON (WHO DOES A SET WITH POET KEITH ARMSTRONG FEATURING EIGHTEENTH CENTURY INSPIRED TYNESIDE POEMS AND TUNES) AND POETS KATRINA PORTEOUS, CATHERINE GRAHAM, HARRY GALLAGHER AND ROB WALTON - AND THERE'S MORE MUSIC FROM THE SAWDUST JACKS (FEATURING THEIR NEW SONG ON NEWCASTLE WRITER JACK COMMON) AND DURHAM'S GARY MILLER. GUESTS FROM TEESSIDE ARE POETS ROBERT LONSDALE AND TREV TEASDEL.

A SPECIAL FEATURE WILL BE TO COMMEMORATE THE ANNIVERSARIES OF LOCAL WRITERS AND ARTISTS JACK COMMON (1903-1968), THOMAS BEWICK (1753-1828), JOHN CUNNINGHAM (1729-1773) AND JOSEPH SKIPSEY (1832-1903).

BRING ALLYOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!


MORE INFORMATION FROM:

DOCTOR KEITH ARMSTRONG,
NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS.

TEL 0191 2529531.







MY FRIEND JACK COMMON (1903-1968)


Ever since the sixth form,
when I found you,
a kindred Novocastrian
in a library book,
I seem to have followed in your steps,
stumbled after you
in rain soaked lanes,
knocked on doors
in search of your stories.
For over forty years,
I have tracked
the movement of your pen
in streets you walked
and on cross country trains
from your own Newcastle
to Warrington
Malvern,
Newport Pagnell,
Letchworth,
Yetminster,
Wallington
and back again.
I have given talks about you,
supped in your pubs,
strode along your paragraphs
and river paths
to try to find
that urge in you
to write
out of your veins
what you thought of things,
what made you tick
and your loved ones
laugh and cry.
I tried to reach you in a thesis,
to see you as a lad in Heaton,
but I could never catch your breath
because I didn’t get to meet you
face to face,
could only guess
that you were like me:
a kind of kindly
socialist writer
in a world
too cruel for words.




KEITH ARMSTRONG

THE SUN ON DANBY GARDENS

The sun on Danby Gardens
smells of roast beef,
tastes of my youth.
The flying cinders of a steam train
spark in my dreams.
Across the old field,
a miner breaks his back
and lovers roll in the ditches,
off beaten tracks.
Off Bigges Main,
my grandad taps his stick,
reaches for the braille of long-dead strikes.
The nights
fair draw in
and I recall Joyce Esthella Antoinette Giles
and her legs that reached for miles,
tripping over the stiles
in red high heels.
It was her and blonde Annie Walker
who took me in the stacks
and taught me how to read
the signs
that led inside their thighs.
Those Ravenswood girls
would dance into your life
and dance though all the snow drops
of those freezing winters,
in the playground of young scars.
And I remember freckled Pete
who taught me Jazz,
who pointed me to Charlie Parker
and the edgy bitterness of Brown Ale.
Mrs Todd next door
was forever sweeping
leaves along the garden path
her fallen husband loved to tread.
Such days:
the smoke of A4 Pacifics in the aftermath of war,
the trail of local history on the birthmarked street.
And I have loved you all my life
and will no doubt die in Danby Gardens
where all my poems were born,
just after midnight.


KEITH ARMSTRONG

Michael Callaghan:  Absolutely brilliant Keith!

Conrad Atkinson: Another gem Keith
Best Conrad 

I WILL SING OF MY OWN NEWCASTLE! HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM POETRY TYNESIDE!

 
























sing of my home city
sing of a true geordie heart
sing of a river swell in me
sing of a sea of the canny
sing of the newcastle day

sing of a history of poetry
sing of the pudding chare rain
sing of the puddles and clarts
sing of the bodies of sailors
sing of the golden sea

sing of our childrens’ laughter
sing of the boats in our eyes
sing of the bridges in sunshine
sing of the fish in the tyne
sing of the lost yards and the pits

sing of the high level railway
sing of the love in my face
sing of the garths and the castle
sing of the screaming lasses
sing of the sad on the side

sing of the battles’ remains
sing of the walls round our dreams
sing of the scribblers and dribblers
sing of the scratchers of livings
sing of the quayside night
 
sing of the kicks and the kisses
sing of the strays and the chancers
sing of the swiggers of ale
sing of the hammer of memory
sing of the welders’ revenge

sing of a battered townscape
sing of a song underground
sing of a powerless wasteland
sing of a buried bard
sing of the bones of tom spence

sing of the cocky bastards
sing of a black and white tide
sing of the ferry boat leaving
sing of cathedral bells crying
sing of the tyneside skies

sing of my mother and father
sing of my sister’s kindness
sing of the hope in my stride
sing of a people’s passion
sing of the strength of the wind


KEITH ARMSTRONG


As featured on BBC Radio 4