THE BIRD WOMAN OF WHITLEY BAY

Photo by Tony Whittle 

She is out feeding the birds,

on the dot again,

in the drizzle of a seaside morning;

the seed 

cast fom her hand

to the jerking beak of a cock pheasant.

She is alone 

in a flock of dark starlings,

scattering crumbs to make them shriek.

She is a friend of spuggies,

gives blackbirds water.

Her eyes fly across the garden

to catch a quick robin,

to spot a wee wren,

to chase a bold magpie.

She is innocence,

she is a lovely old lady;

still giving,

still nursing.

She deserves heaven,

she deserves a beautiful nest

to dream out her last hours 

in bird song;

in the rich colours of music,

in the red feathers of sunset,

she is my mother,

she is a rare bird

who fed me beautiful dreams.

Thank you for letting me climb 

with the skylarks.

Thank you

for the strength of wings. 

KEITH ARMSTRONG

 



Thank you very much for this poem. Ever since I have heard you reading it out at “Poems, Prose, Pints” it has been on my mind – it’s written in such a gentle and honest voice. The poem may be dedicated to your mum, but, as you said in the pub, it’s something you could say about all mums. I certainly feel reminded of my own mother, who died not so long ago, when I read the poem.

Love

Brigitte

Hi Keith

Thanks for this beautiful poem.

Tim G

Dear Keith ! Thank you very much. You read this poem when you were here in Groningen. It moves me each time I read or hear it. Nice talking to you on the phone yesterday. All the best, yours, Henk

Thanks Keith - you moved me.

All best

Chrissie

The Bird Woman of Whitley is a lovely poem, Keith.  Beautiful tribute.

Trish.

You amazing poet YOU

- thank you for that that poem - it deserves a very good moment, but I will translate it.

Uwe

Lovely poem!

Keep sending them!

Julie

Good poem, Keith

Cheers

SallyE

Thank you, Keith, thank you –

 For bringing a fulsome tear to my eye with the sad and beautifully-crafted The Bird Woman of Whitley. How amazingly coincidental and serendipitous that you should have numbered me amongst those privileged to receive it because, just this afternoon, I have put in the post to you my Christmas book (in Irish) An Nollaig sa Naigín (Christmas in the Noggin [my homeplace]), which has in it the story Céad Sneachta na Nollag (First Christmas Snow), which features my own mother feeding two birds, they being the Robin and the Wren!!!!

 Bravo, my friend, and thank you for giving me the delight of reading so beautiful a poem.

Ré

Thats a nice poem Keith. Is that lady really your mum?

Mick

Thanks for sending me this beautiful poem. It really moved me. I have a special Mother too, she hasn't a selfish thought in her body. 

Cheers

Catherine Graham

Hi Keith loved the poem

Mike

Thanks for your beautiful poem Keith. I must write something special to my mum. 

Paul

I WILL SING OF MY OWN NEWCASTLE

I WILL SING OF MY OWN NEWCASTLE

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) 

"I heard the broadcast. You should be congratulated on your contribution. It was certainly more enjoyable than a man describing the photographs he'd taken on the wireless." (Brian Bennison, North East Laboury History Society).

Posted by keith armstrong at 7:31 am

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

Peter Common Well said Keith!

Dear kindly socialist writer - this is great - thanks a lot for sending it

Love

Pat

INNOCENT BLOOD: THE HEXHAM RIOT MARCH 9TH 1761

In 1761 a new Militia Act came into force. Strangely it managed to arouse strong negative feelings in both ordinary working people and the ruling class: the former because a ballot system of recruitment - essentially conscription - was resented; the latter as training the masses to use weapons was felt to be dangerous for the future, priming them for revolution.
On March 9th 1761 a large crowd gathered in Hexham Market Place to protest about the ballot system, some putting the numbers as high as 5000, though a few hundred is more likely. For several hours the leaders of the protest talked with the magistrates, remonstrating about the imposition. Those magistrates feared violence, and brought in a force of the North Yorks Militia as protection against a mob attack. Their presence, however, probably further enflamed tempers.
Eventually the magistrates lost patience, and the Riot Act was read. As the crowd turned uglier, the soldiers fixed bayonets. The mob, by now its fierier members armed with tools and staves, charged. Two soldiers were killed with guns grabbed from them or their comrades, then a volley or far more probably a series of volleys was fired into the rioters. When the smoke cleared at least 50 were dead, including the two soldiers. Another 300 or more were injured, some of them dying later of their wounds. Among the dead were two pregnant women.
A hunt went on over the next few weeks for anyone known to have participated in the riot, taking in not just Hexham but the settlements around it, the list of casualties showing people from Corbridge, Slayley, Stamfordham and Ryall among many others had been involved. Unsurprisingly the North Yorks Militia earned the sobriquet The Hexham Butchers after the event.




TUESDAY MARCH 10TH 1761


‘The Market Place was a tragic sight. Bodies of the dead and wounded lay scattered. The ground was stained with blood and the cries of the wounded were pitiful. The following day it rained, washing away the traces.’


Wash away the day,
wash the pain away,
sweep the remains of yesterday
into the racing river.
Beat the Dead March,
bang the old drum,
heal Hexham’s bust bones
and cry me a river,
cry the Water of Tyne.
Wash away the day
and wash this pain away.


 
A PITMAN DEAD


With blood gushing out of his boot tops,
a well-dressed man
leaves town
along Priestpopple.
Thirteen men lie inside the Abbey,
not owned.
Numbers are found dead upon the roads.
Big with child, Sarah Carter shot,
the musket ball found in the child’s belly.
Thrice into a man’s body
lying at James Charlton’s shop door
it’s said they ran theIr bayonets;
and a pitman dead,
a weaver:
all those broken days of history,
all the slain hours in our diaries.
Sound the Abbey’s bells!
Let them toll the severed minutes.
Let them celebrate
the end of torture.
Let them gush
with rejoicing
for more peaceful times.



THERE’S A RIOT


These streets,
in this Heart of All England,
are swept clean of blood.
But the stains still soak our books.
Death upon death,
we turn the pages;
in between the lines,
we read about the screams,
time’s bullets
tearing flesh away.
There is terror lurking in this Market Place,
just scrape away the skin
and, deep down,
there’s a Riot:
a commotion boiling
a terrible turbulence,
a throbbing pain.
It is a Riot of gore,
a torrential downpour
of weeping:
a seeping sore
that is Hexham’s History.




KEITH ARMSTRONG

(Poems featured in Hexham Local History Society Newsletter Autumn 2011)

TYNESIDE POETS IN SWEDEN AND DENMARK

In August 1975, Keith Armstrong, the late Gordon Phillips and the late Mike Wilkin were guests for 10 days at an international writers' conference held in the Grand Hotel, Molle, Sweden. As part of the programme, they performed their poetry in Elsinore, Denmark.

NUDE BATHER AT MOLLE, SWEDEN

You set the seal on these cliffs,

lying

with your dew-drenched body

burning away minutes in the sun.

Turning, the world turns with you.

Your blonde hair crackles with the light

and life

throbs inside you like a sea.

You are the rise,

the set

of a sun-fruit globe.

You are a bulb, naked,

a blister on the rock of caged ages,

pinned to the earth by your heaving breath and

the whole breath of the world.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

INDIGNITY

for Keith Armstrong and Mike Wilkin

Elsinore,

low-lying as a Claudius.

Around its porous castle walls

we stalk with Hamlet,

poisoned by the threat of closing time,

yet in the irony

of leaving things far too late

must satisfy

a last indignity.

Free to join us,

some Ophelia,

not fatherless,

or grief-stricken,

but, maybe, a little deranged,

(though still persuasive)

picks up my guitar to sing something cool:

How to undress a man

in the name of democracy.

She will not go quietly to that watery pool.

Elsinore, August 1975

G. F. Phillips

GORDON IN THE PICTURE BY DAVE ALTON

Those must be Irish rocks you were snapped on,

A wave cut platform for a poet, nothing

Between your backside and New York. Was that

The day you read the map, the day I drove?

“Straight ahead.” you said, without looking up,

Without seeing the Atlantic rollers

Rolling over shingle at the road’s end.

You are shot in near silhouette against

A brittle-blue sky, posed with your hands poised

Like a gunslinger, over his pistols,

With nowhere to run, so having to turn

And face, knowing that no matter how quick

You are you can’t outdraw your destiny.

Way out at sea restless energy roils,

Rising in waves and dashing to the shore,

Dashing on shore like Waterford crystal

Shattering. Then the turning, drawing back,

Losing identity in fathomless

Waters, to reform in a different tide:

After all, nothing’s absolutely lost.

Was it cold that afternoon when we stood

Two poets on that sea-scoured Irish stage,

Declaiming to the seagulls? I do not

Recall either of us that long gone day,

Before we went to the pub, shivering.

Dave Alton

GORDON PHILLIPS - TYNESIDE POET (1949 - 2017): IN MEMORIAM

Gordon Phillips – Tyneside Poet

I first met Gordon in the early 1970s, both of us “incumdons” to the North East, he from St. Albans while I’d arrived from Burnley. It was poetry that brought us together as active members of The Tyneside Poets.

We shared the ethos of taking poetry away from the self-regarding circles of academe and the cliques to encourage a wider participation. At the same time we developed and honed our own poetic voices.

Gordon’s verse always had a strong musical current pulsing through it and he went on to work with composers to produce work that was lyrical and had strong strains of North Eastern traditions and heritage running through it.

True to the belief in encouraging others we worked together on two anthologies of young people’s poetry under a small press imprint, Pivot Press. For the first one we had a goodly number of contributions and the detailed planning of the anthology was well underway. What we didn’t have was a title. Then Gordon received an envelope with a couple of good poems in it.

The accompanying letter also proved significant. The boy, early teens, was enthusiastic about the possibility of having a poem or two published. However, he was somewhat concerned about how he might be perceived by his peers. This led him to write that he’d be really pleased if we used one of his poems but, “…don’t tell my friends.” Both editions of “Don’t Tell My Friends” were very successful.

Before I left Tyneside in 2012 Gordon had been showing me a poetic project he was working on with St. Mary’s lighthouse in Whitley Bay as its focus. Recently, almost five years later he gave me a copy of the CD, “The Square and Compass”: the project was completed and set to music. A grand piece of work.

Unfortunately, the CD has been followed far too quickly with bad news. On Sunday, 5^th February 2017, the illness Gordon had alerted me to finally claimed him. Perhaps it is always too soon, but this is truly so. On my last visit with him he told me of other projects he still had in mind and I had hoped he might at least be able to bring some of them to fruition. It is not to be.

However, as a poet his voice, Gordon’s words, will live on. It was poetry that brought us together, sustained our long friendship and will remain to speak to me.

Dave Alton

POEM FOR GORDON (1949-2017)


Across a Fenham avenue,
through the pools of stars in your eyes,
the seering light of your vision,
I saw your finely hewed words running towards me,
a crystal stream
tearing along these Newcastle lanes.
We tripped along together
in huddled poetry readings,
throbbing public houses
and ancient mansions,
searching for images
to make our days
brighter,
longing for a folk song
to drink with
in the approaching darkness.
Searching,
always searching,
for the right words
to sing to our loved ones,
we crossed the sea
to fulfil our dreams
from the flat land of East Anglia
into the arms of Scandinavia,
returning with that smile of yours
still intact,
beaming with the sun
breaking up the clouds
on any dogged northern day
in your adopted home,
lending a sparkle to Grainger Street,
a twinkle to our beer;
the joy of a lasting friend,
the spilt dreams
forever flowing with us.


 
KEITH ARMSTRONG




THE TREATMENT BELL (GORDON'S FINAL POEM)

 
On the side wall, beside the reception

hangs the treatment bell,

pristine, silver,

its shine an encouraging glow.



Before it, hopeful patients sit.

The next ringer strikes a note for them all:

a customary three times

for an end of plan toll,

excitement measured in the hammering and applause.

 


Gordon Phillips, 18th December 2016


Note from Maureen Phillips:

The first time Gordon and I heard the three rings of the bell was on his first visit to the Department of Radiation Oncology for consultative purposes to evaluate and determine his most optional treatment.  

The inscription on the bell is:
Ring this bell
Three times well
It's toll to clearly say
My treatment's done
This course is run
And I am on my way
 



FOR THOMAS BEWICK

 
In your precious art you raised
delicate species fresh, alive
with every searching niche of blade,
on metalled tints of bone
in flesh, conceived.

Today, our clear eye can review
that aggregate of animals
and speading plants which grew;
now your thoughts to Cherryburn
are our adoption.

Through sludge of field flung back
from my drag of parting feet,
crossing rutted rural lands
you swept in light and shade,
a lock of trees
inside a border to engrave.


 
Gordon Phillips

(as read by Dave Alton at Gordon's funeral on Thursday 16th February 2017 at St Robert of Newminster Roman Catholic Church,  Newcastle upon Tyne)