MY FATHER WORKED ON SHIPS

My father worked on ships.

They spelked his hands, 

dusted his eyes, his face, his lungs.

Those eyes that watered by the Tyne

stared out to sea

to see the world

in a tear of water, at the drop

of an old cloth cap.

For thirty weary winters

he grafted

through the snow and the wild winds

of loose change.

He was proud of those ships he built,

he was proud of the men he built with,

his dreams sailed with them:

the hull was his skull,

the cargo his brains.

His hopes rose and sunk

in the shipwrecked streets 

of Wallsend

and I look at him now

this father of mine who worked on ships

and I feel proud

of his skeletal frame, this coastline

that moulded me

and my own sweet dreams.

He sits in his retiring chair,

dozing into the night.

There are storms in his head

and I wish him more love yet.

Sail with me,

breathe in me,

breathe that rough sea air old man,

and cough it up.

Rage, rage

against the dying

of this broken-backed town,

the spirit

of its broken-backed

ships.

                               Keith Armstrong

THE TYNESIDE POETS - THOSE WERE THE DAYS!

GEORDIE SONGS SUNG BY GEORDIE WILSON!

POEM FOR MY FRIEND GARY (1962-2014)

Your thoughts ran deep by the Wear.

You were the only one

who brought Franz Kafka to the writers’ group meeting.

The Durham mines were your veins

and you took your genuine heritage onto the Horden bus.

Many’s the drink we poured over

our thoughts and dreams of Socialism.

In lots of ways, our hopes were cruelly dashed

but you strode on

with that serious chuckle of yours,

nobly bearing your ideals

for all the passengers to see

on your daring journey 

through this dangerous life.

You took your reading abroad

to share with others 

in worlds as far apart

as Poland, Oman and Kurdistan.

Teaching was your calling

and you had divine patience for it,

a love of times of being together

like those golden days I remember with you

listening to Dollar Brand in a Bremen concert,

washing down the day with apfelkorn,

talking cricket with you in Chester-le-Street

and laughing at NewcastleGateshead on a tourist bus

as the sun set on a New Town

and another Empire died.

Gary, I wish

I’d got to see you again

before your sweet smile left our streets and avenues.

One thing I know though:

when I googled you today,

all I found was kindness.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

ST. MARY'S ISLAND, WHITLEY BAY

FRIENDS OF ST. MARY’S ISLAND

Around the low water mark,

kelp beds grow.

Network of rockpools,

boulder shore.

Long-legged bar-tailed godwit,

expert

at finding

mud and sand-living worms.

Seabed of rocky reefs,

shipwrecks dived within and around.

Wrasse and lumpsucker.

Seashore Code.

Remembered rambles,

geology jaunts.

Soft coral communities.

Relic dunes.

THE BEACON

A St. Mary’s Light

incandescent

with rage.

A three ton lens,

balanced

on a trough of mercury,

kept revolving,

round the gas mantle,

by a simple pendulum 

wound up

on the hour.

A climb

up 137 steps,

inside the 120 foot tower,

a hiss of flame,

clamping 

of a prism

constantly

turning.

Since medieval times,

across the ocean fields,

this beacon 

has burned,

blinking

on the drink.

Years sailed by,

memories

of shipwrecks,

of Russian soldiers

cholera-wracked

in 1799,

of the ‘Gothenburg City’

and rats with chewed tails.

These heartbreaking waves,

the illumination

of shafts of history:

the rays

and days

of a shining Empire

sunk.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

NORTH TYNESIDE STEAM - KILLINGWORTH BOOK LAUNCH

Lines Written in a Country Alehouse

Here we behold the sons of Bacchus set,
To drown their sorrows in tumultous joys,
Where each his past misfortune does forget -
Where calls for silence but increase the noise.

Fumes potent rise, and each succeeding draught
Proclaims the growing goodness of the beer;
And Hodge rears his stentorian voice aloft -
For he in reasoning owns no compeer.

In Politics with foresight keen he dips -
To show their course his spacious hand extends;
Fates fall from off the rustic Nestor's lips,
And empires hang upon his fingers' ends.

With well-clenched fist he makes the table plead;
Half-thunderstruck the gaping rustics stare;
They all admire the wisdom in his head -
But the great wonder is, how it came there.

I like such rhetoric - for to me it shows
More than a world of flowery tropes could teach -
That e'en the English peasant feels and knows
The glorious privileges of thought and speech.

       Robert Gilchrist (1797-1844)

THE STORY OF STEAM: FOR GEORGE STEPHENSON 1781-1848

‘How wonderfully has his invention facilitated the meeting of thousands of fond and happy lovers.’ (Thomas Summerside)

The story of steam,

history’s hiss 

through the passing

of engines and 

clapped-out hours.

The pereptual urge

to move

into the peace

of sleeping valleys;

iron dreams

and the nagging drive

of cruel ambition 

on the banks of the sliding Tyne.

You knew all this George,

how violent life is,

as, thoughtless in your youth, 

you stole a blackbird’s eggs,

developing an understanding

of mankind’s urge

to rip forests apart,

to make ways

through gardens and castles, 

for commerce

and selfishness to have their way.

That and the wonderful offshoots

like lovers

getting together

and children laughing

in cultural deserts.

Your broad Northumbrian tongue

echoed along rails,

barked orders

to force idle workers

to spark the engines

that scared the crows

and brought terror to horses and cattle

with the fiery blast of mechanical power.

Your ambition surged roughshod

over delicate flowers,

more interested in the mechanics of time 

and fixing watches

than the whispers that the clocks of dandelions

heard in the breeze.

Mister Practicality, 

though you knew that the human lot

ended up in vapour,

you still told the pitmen’s sons that the earth

was round,

taught algebra to the lads

in a curiosity shop

of working models,

self-acting planes

and perpetual motion machines.

In your litttle garden,

you grew gigantic leeks, astounding cabbages,

scarecrow ams to fly in the wind

and a sundial to record the ticks of days.

Hammering the flaming hours

into the rickety shape of Blucher,

you moved people along the way,

crafted the valves, the rods and cylinders

of life

into a breathing thing

that lolloped along,

careering like you

into a famous night.

It did not come without a price;

My Lord, they can’t imagine

how much you scraped along in the dirt,

the bursting blisters on your feet,

your hurting fingers as you began to write.

Wriggling out of the Militia,

you earned everything you got,

forced 

to suffer the deaths of wives and daughter

and the blinding of a father.

Weeping bitterly on the West Moor to Killingworth road,

thinking of leaving for America,

you got to your own station in the end.

Geordie,

with Ferguson’s ‘Astronomy’ in your hardy hands,

you gave us many a glorious smoke-filled day,

brought young lovers together on platforms

awash with the smell of smoke

and the sparks of hearts 

spreading lightning across the land. 

KEITH ARMSTRONG

from 'North Tyneside Steam', Northern Voices Community Projects, 2014

NORTH TYNESIDE STEAM

NORTH TYNESIDE STEAM

A celebration of the bicentenary of the steam locomotive Blucher, together with the story of its creator George Stephenson in North Tyneside and of steam railways in the area. 

COMPILED AND EDITED BY KEITH ARMSTRONG AND PETER DIXON FOR NORTH TYNESIDE COUNCIL

This new book from Northern Voices Community Projects, commissioned by North Tyneside Council, with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, has been published to mark the bicentenary of George Stephenson's steam locomotive Blucher.

Blucher was built by George Stephenson in Killingworth, North Tyneside in 1814 in the Colliery workshop behind Stephenson’s house, Dial Cottage. The engine was named after the Prussian general Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher who fought in the battle of Waterloo, helping to defeat Napoleon. It pulled coal trucks along the wagonway from Killingworth to the coal staithes at Wallsend. Blucher made Stephenson’s reputation and over the next five years he built 16 more locomotives (many of which were built by recycling Blucher’s parts) at Killingworth, some for the Colliery and some for the Duke of Portland’s wagonway between Kilmarnock and Troon, which improved on the earlier engine, and this led to him being commissioned to build the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, establishing him as an engine designer and laying the foundations for his major role in the development of railways. 

With historical documents and images, alongside poems, songs, stories, photographs and drawings by local people, the book is intended to ensure that the story of steam in North Tyneside is not forgotten.

Dr Keith Armstrong,

Peter Dixon,

Northern Voices Community Projects

Celebrate the 200th Anniversary of the

invention of the Blucher Steam Locomotive.

North Tyneside Steam - compiled & edited by Keith Armstrong & Peter Dixon:

Book Launch

at Killingworth Library, White Swan Centre, Killingworth

6pm on Friday 25th July 2014.

Includes readings of poems and short stories from

the book and music from The Sawdust Jacks, Tony Morris and Gary Miller. Also featuring Ann Sessoms on Northumbrian Pipes. 

Light refreshments available.

NORTH TYNESIDE STEAM:

HERITAGE OPEN DAYS EVENT

This new book from Northern Voices Community Projects, commissioned by North Tyneside Council, with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, has been published to mark the bicentenary of George Stephenson's steam locomotive Blucher and tells the story of its creator in Killingworth and North Tyneside and of steam railways in the area.

Contributors to the book will perform their poems, stories and songs introduced by the editor local poet Keith Armstrong with Ann Sessoms on Northumbrian Pipes. 

WHITE SWAN CENTRE CAFE, KILLINGWORTH, FRIDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER AT 11AM.

THE POET WHO SUNG ON THE BANKS OF THE TYNE

Enter St John's Churchyard, near Newcastle Central railway station, and you will find towards the rear an inscribed monument which covers the grave of the pastoral poet John Cunningham (1729-1773).

St John's Churchyard was noted for its 'poets' corner'. Unfortunately, apart from John Cunningham their memorial stones are now missing. They include two contemporaries to Robert Gilchrist -  William Watson (1796 - 1840) whose many songs included 'Dance to the Daddy', and timber merchant and songwriter Thomas Thompson (1773-1816), who was a mentor to Robert. Gilchrist composed a sentimental eulogy to Thompson upon his death in 1816.

Gilchrist wrote a number of eulogies to Newcastle's poets and civic dignataries and a fine one to Cunningham was published in Robert's Poems of 1826. It reads: