JOSEPH SKIPSEY HERITAGE EVENTS

FOR JOE SKIPSEY: THE PITMAN POET OF PERCY MAIN (1832-1903)

‘He’ll tell his tale o’er a pint of ale,

And crack his joke, and bad

Must be the heart who loveth not

To hear the Collier Lad.’ (Skipsey)

To be a pitman poet

you drag words

out of the seam of a dictionary,

write against the grain

all the time

feeling the pain

of a small education,

scribbling in the dark

for a bright spark

germ of a poem.

Hewing

for rhymes,

ducking 

in case the roof

of the verse

caved in on you,

Joe

it was bloody hard 

to learn,

to craft a line

from the black pit

when the whole world

weighed down on you.

A man was forced

to sing,

to render a ballad

like a lamp in the tunnel,

scraping an education

from coal,

crawling along bookshelves

to find daylight,

Shakespeare,

Shelley

and melody

in the stacks

of an underground library.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

KEITH ARMSTRONG PERFORMING HIS JOSEPH SKIPSEY POEM AT THE  HARTLEY PIT DISASTER MEMORIAL, ST. ALBAN'S CHURCH, EARSDON, WHITLEY BAY, SATURDAY 14TH SEPTEMBER 2013, AS PART OF HERITAGE OPEN DAYS EVENT TO MARK THE 110TH ANNIVERSARY OF SKIPSEY'S DEATH.

ARMSTRONG ALSO INTRODUCED FELLOW POETS DAVE ALTON, GORDON PHILLIPS, ELAINE CUSACK AND ROBERT LONSDALE WHO READ THEIR POEMS ON THE HARTLEY PIT CALAMITY OF 1862:

ABOVE:CHRIS HARRISON, GREAT GREAT GRANDSON OF SKIPSEY, PERFORMING SKIPSEY'S 'THE HARTLEY CALAMITY' POEM AT THE SAME EVENT.

ABOVE: M.C. KEITH ARMSTRONG AND THE SAWDUST JACKS FOLK GROUP (WITH ST. ALBAN'S CHURCH CHOIR) WHO PERFORMED THEIR HARTLEY SONG 'BROTHERS, SONS AND DADS', IN THE CHURCH AFTER THE RECITATIONS AND MUSIC AT THE HARTLEY MEMORIAL. 

http://youtu.be/qga1LvwagIc

Above photos: Chris Bishop

CHRIS HARRISON PERFORMING SKIPSEY AT THE RED HOUSE, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE, ON THURSDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER 2013.

Above photo: Peter Dixon

COMMENTS:

Tony Morris:

Great reception at Red House, Quayside, Newcastle last night for Northern Voices Mining Heritage Project. Lovely audience. Thank you Keith Armstrong.

Catherine Graham: 

Thank you to all the lovely people who came along to The Red House tonight, it was lovely to meet everyone - a great night!

Brian Hall:

Praise from the Hall Clan to the Armstrong Clan.........thought you ran last night really well, and a good combination. I enjoyed it, well done.

Robert Lonsdale:

Enjoyed an absolutely brilliant night of exceptional poetry and music at the " Red House " hosted by the legendary Keith Armstrong , many thanks to everyone there. Already looking forward to your next event Keith,

Chris Harrison:

Thanks or giving me the opportunity to sing at these two events.  I was really pleased to be able to do it.

Do let me know about any future events.

Elaine Cusack:

Really enjoyed yesterday's event at Hartley, Keith.

John Leslie (the Sawdust Jacks):

Thanks for the poems and for the opportunity of performing at Earsdon. We enjoyed rehearsing with the choir and I think our relationship may continue. The day was a great success and the feedback from your activities at the memorial was very good.

Thanks again.

Fiona Cullen (Newcastle City Council):

Many thanks for your participation throughout Tyne and Wear.

Chris Bishop (North Tyneside Council):

Best wishes and well done on the event.  

Andrew France (Vicar St. Alban's, Earsdon):

Thanks Keith. I thought it went well. 

HERITAGE OPEN DAYS

NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS presents: 

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, Robert Lonsdale and Steve Brown, settings of Skipsey's poems sung by his great great grandson Chris Harrison, songs by Gary Miller of  'The Whisky Priests', 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 be in the church on the day.

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.

MAP OF THE WORLD

We turned its global head as babies,

traced its edges onto paper,

scarcely scratched

the surface

of that old familiar spotted face

shaped up, boiling for a fight.

Hung on walls,

it looked so static

but in its latitudes and longitudes we knew

that people moved,

homes grew,

cities drowned

and cliffs broke.

Later, travelling,

we stepped out

across the sheet,

skipped the Channel,

entered 

new squares.

Then creeping back

at dusk,

we folded up this map,

packed away the ice

and sunny beach,

stuck it all in a small back pocket

and shrunk back

into our own world’s frontiers.

That tiny territory

of our scars.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Malawi Poem

On the road in Malawi pupils walk to school

Cyclists transport family livestock and furniture

Lorries fight with the dust while monkeys meander

Branches worn of a funeral

Women walk for water

By the roadside girls sit and knit boys pull wired cars

Women work and wash babies play in the dust

Men sit in the shade and watch

Piles of stone and wood wait

Thirsty folk dig in dry river beds

Children chew cane wear white smiles and wave

At the market stalls sell all ;eggs sit side by side with soap

Everyone welcomes with beaming mouths

They have so little yet smile so much

By the lake bourgainvillea blossoms eagles dive men  and  

kingfishers fish

All wallow in waterA lone canoeist paddled a coffin across 

the lake

Lots of coffin shops on the roadside

Heaven Bound Funeral Parlour

A lone canoeist paddled a coffin across the lake

Zikoma Thankyou for coming to my country said an old man.

The sun set in the ochre dust sky

Mary Atkinson

(Winner of the Warkworth Show Poetry Competition, 2013)

THE MELLY-BELLY SONGS!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACK COMMON (1903-1968)

'The one faculty with which school infallibly endures its pupils, that of being bored. It is very important, of course, that every child should, in the course of time, become fitted with this negative capability. If they didn't have it, they'd never put up with the jobs they are going to get, most of them, on leaving school. Boredom or the ability to endure it, is the hub on which the whole universe of work turns.' Jack Common.

GEOFF HOLLAND - NEW POEMS

DECEMBER DAY

Drab December day,

Wooler sleepwalks through half-lit dawn.

Alone in north Northumberland,

silent beside giggling burn & primed.

The easy track leads on.

Reastead revisited

& bullocks eyeing with suspicion,

Hart Heugh, stone-strewn & ancient,

drifts in & out of sight.

Pheasants shriek at Switcherdown,

a single tree & tumbled stones.

Little remains, only a witches ghost.

Cold Law, head in the clouds,

feet in the bare winter valley,

a reluctant, retiring host.

A red grouse warns, `go-back, back, back`,

but up past boundary stone to summit cairn,

drenched to its own skin, sullen.

Carling Crag, shrouded & mysterious,

dissolves once seen

& then to Carey Burn

bristling, scurrying downstream. Pell-mell.

The linn, grey, flood-washed rock,

white beard reminding me

it is Christmas time.

But, first, the Hellpath,

tree-lined & saturated,

strength-sapping as it angles skywards.

The sting in the long tail home.

EIGHTY YEARS ON

(In memory of W. Ford Robertson)

Wooler, up with the larks

& the 9:25 train to Kirknewton

steaming beneath Yeavering.

Bowmont seeping into Glendale

& the sky blossoming with summer.

August, honey-sweet, brushes past,

the day still young.

Comfortable with your long stride,

boots glide over ancient rocks.

A bag, packed for the day,

slung over broad shoulders,

two yards of strong twine

& a kettle ready for the boil.

A stout stick, swings in tune,

a countryside concerto.

A grouse breaks cover, startles,

flies free over Commonburn.

Quiet on Tom Tallon`s Crag,

clouds build over Cheviot

& on over Black Law, Gains Law,

Drythropple basking in sunlight,

then Humbleton`s pond, reflective,

& the village green.

Wooler waits your whistling return

& a meal fit for a king.

Eighty years on

& I struggle to keep pace.

THE ROSE & THISTLE

A cool breeze

and dappled light over Alwinton,

Coquetdale`s last,

an English rose, sleeps on.

A fox slips behind blackthorn,

snowdrops break rank

and daffodils bow their heads.

Songbirds

and the naked limbs of hawthorn.

Spring stirs

beneath hills brushed with snow.

Footsteps quicken,

Clennell Street draws breath,

climbs past Castle Hills

and Yarnspath Law to Hexpethgate.

Then down to Cocklawfoot

where burns collide.

Here the thistle thrives

and an old road strikes north.

Community of Poets

The Tyneside Poets of the 1970s have left two legacies. Latterly, this blog which, as well as forging international links, is a platform for new writing as well as an archive of poems from Poetry North East.

The more active component though is Northern Voices Community Projects, guided by Keith Armstrong and Pete Dixon, with a mission to promote poetry in the north east and beyond: www.northernvoicescommunityprojects.co.uk

The beyond part is presently being realised by a fledgling poetry group and its blog – www.barnsleyvoice.wordpress.con – founded in conjunction with the U3A. South Yorkshire may seem some way from Tyneside, but, way back the Barnsley area was part of the Kingdom of Northumbria.

Rather more important than tenuous links is the emergence of a small but growing kernel of poets finding their voices, many for the first time. Beth Rudkin had not written poetry previously to joining the group, but is beginning to develop her own style.

Today I Went to Gordale Scar

The approach to it is charming:

Rippling waters, celandines, primroses,

Grasses, trees

And bumble bees.

Thriving, wonderful life.

Then you turn the corner.

Huge cliffs blend together

Conspiring, sides pleated,

Grey and overwhelming.

They are the Ancient of Days,

Water falls with vicious force,

But there is no life.

Life. It is pretty, joyful,

Sometimes sad, always short.

Is it significant?

“No!” say the cliffs,

“We have been here for millennia.

We will be here for ever.

We are significant.”

I retrace my steps.

                                                                             Beth Rudkin

Using his pen-name Shaun Adam, a former journalist from Pakistan is keen to expand his writing from his natural tongue, Urdu, and become a bilingual poet.

I and Morning-star

Burning sky turned black

And night fell

Stars set in shining

Laying down at the roof-top

Gazing and counting them

Knowing they are countless

In melancholy looking for my luck-star

I have done this for ages

Sleep on the shoulders of thoughts

Descended down the eyes

Ascending hope resisted the invaders

The fight continued

Till the morning-star saluted the darkness

Faraway in the Milky-way

Broke a star silently

Drawing a glowing ray behind

On its course to earth

Stunned but confident

The falling star was mine

The hope yielded to intruders

I and morning-star succumbed to sleep

                                                                                            Shaun Adam

These are only two of the Barnsley Voice group and it is perhaps unfair on the others to highlight this couple. However, as the group was founded by a Northern Voices Community Projects associate, who also remains associate editor of Poetry Tyneside despite his move south, there will be future opportunities for other group members to contribute their work to this blog.

Dave Alton