FOR MY MOTHER AND FATHER

THE BIRD WOMAN OF WHITLEY BAY

(FOR MY MOTHER)


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
 

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

 
‘This is one of the poems I'll never forget. I see the struggling of my own dad in your words.
Thanks for your fine poem.’ (Klaas Drenth)

‘Beautiful poem. Loving, moving memories. Most excellent Keith.’ (Strider Marcus Jones)

‘Love the poem Keith. That’s my dad.’ (John McMahon)
 
‘Beautifully visual Keith, nice to share your memories.’ x (Annie Sheridan)
 
‘Lovely poem, loving memories too.’ (Imelda Welsh)
 
‘So, so good, Keith - I'll share this, if you don't mind.’ (Kenny Jobson)
       

WALLACE'S RIGHT ARM BY DR KEITH ARMSTRONG

On 23rd August 1305, William Wallace was executed. At that time, the punishment for the crime of treason was that the convicted traitor was dragged to the place of execution, hanged by the neck (but not until he was dead), and disembowelled (or drawn) while still alive. His entrails were burned before his eyes, he was decapitated and his body was divided into four parts (or quartered). Accordingly, this was Wallace's fate. His head was impaled on a spike and displayed at London Bridge, his right arm on the bridge at Newcastle upon Tyne, his left arm at Berwick, his right leg at Perth, and the left leg at Aberdeen. Edward may have believed that with Wallace's capture and execution, he had at last broken the spirit of the Scots. He was wrong. By executing Wallace so barbarically, Edward had martyred a popular Scots military leader and fired the Scottish people's determination to be free.

WALLACE’S RIGHT ARM

Wave goodbye ye oafs of culture,
let your rootless dreams drift away.
History has come to drown you in blood
and wash up your empty schemes.

Yon tottering Palaces of Culture
are seized by the rampaging sea.
They are sailing back to the Equator
to burn in a jungle of fear.

Three hundred million years me lads,
unseen from these high rise days:
an ice sheet thick as an ocean,
all those hours just melted down.

Into rich seams of coal,
tropical plants were fossilised;
the sandbanks grew into sandstone
and the mudflats into shale.

And the right arm of William Wallace
shakes with wrath in this firework night.
It is waving goodbye to your history,
it is saying hello to Baghdad.

All the brains of your Labour Party
are stashed in a carrier bag.
Down Bottle Bank in the darkness,
you can hear Wallace scream in a dog.

And will you hang, draw, and quarter my home street?
Will you drop bombs on the music hall?
You have taken the bones from our loves
and taken the piss from the Tyne.

So give me your arm Good Sir Braveheart,
I’ll take it a walk through the park
and I’ll use it to strike down a student
with an empty shell of a soul.

And I’d give my right arm to make ships,
my left to stoke dreams alive.
And I will dance on in the brilliance of life
until oppression is blown away.


KEITH ARMSTRONG

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

 

THOMAS BEWICK (1753-1828): FIVE POEMS BY DR KEITH ARMSTRONG

AMEN CORNER

(in memory of Thomas Bewick, wood engraver)

The starlings en masse

roost here now.

They blend with the dark trees

in the twilight

by Bewick's shadowy workshop.

Under the Cathedral spire,

they shriek and gossip

in the chill;

chit-chat of more weather.

I think that Thomas

you could speak to birds,

knew them as you drew their words

in woodblocks.

You coaxed them from their very eggs,

uncaged them -

let them sing on the page.

THE BROTHERLY SOCIETY

London

Depressed you

with its ‘blackguard places’,

its streetwalking ways.

They called you ‘Scotchman’

and you itched for home,

reading the Geordie papers

at the Hole-in-the-Wall. 

And your heart trilled like a blackbird’s

when you rejoined your Whig mates,

putting a world to rights

in the Lion Lounge.

You were back

herding sheep in your roots,

smiling down to your boots

in that Brotherly Society

of Northumbrian cronies:

the wild fields

of Tyne.

RETURN TO CHERRYBURN

Drawing

clear of the city,

you carved your name  

in dogs barks

and birds cries.  

Your infant eyes

kept seeing

the devils in bushes

and the gods

in thrushes.

You loved

to scratch a living.

Avoiding the faces

of strange places,

You dreamed of always

Being a boy,

A bird or a fish,

Awash in the light

Of a dark wood:

A cherry burn.

Footprints home

To remember.  

‘TALE PIECES’

You spent your life

perfecting it,

crafty as a fox

forging a frantic path

across the fields.

To the sound of the Pipes,

you worked your way

to a quiet glade,

died contentedly

devising

‘tale-pieces’:

a tuneful ending

to a drawn-in-day.

       

WALK ON, TOM BEWICK     

Stride Circus Lane

and chip your signature

on the pavement of scrapes and kisses.

pass the Forth

and skirt

its pleasure gardens;

throw your darts in the archery field.

skim the bowling green

and walk on water,

doff your hat to Mrs Waldie;

cut along

old scars of lanes

to the bloody gush of Westgate street;

whistle with birds

in a vicar’s garden,

let warm thoughts fly in Tyneside sun

to bless this Geordie day.

And greet

the morning hours,

Aunt Blackett and Gilbert Gray,

sing to free the world,

the Black Boy;

harmonise your mind

in a churchyard of melancholy.

Dance over the Lort Burn,

in the sun in your eyes,

flooding your workshop

with a light fantastic.

Your shoulders so proud

rub with the building girls

and lady barbers

along Sandhill;

the boats of your dreams

bridge the aching Tyne,

ships groaning

in the tender daylight,

longing for the healing moon;

a keelman’s fantasies

of quayside flesh

and the seething sea.

You trip along

searching for electricity and magnetism

in the inns,

winging it

with the bird catchers and canary breeders,

the dirty colliers and the harping whalers.

Walk on Tom,

execute

a portrait

of a hanging man;

let your strong heart

swell with the complex passion

of common folk.

TELL ME LIES ABOUT NORTHUMBERLAND

TELL ME LIES ABOUT NORTHUMBERLAND
(in honour of Adrian Mitchell)


Say this land is ours,
these pipe tunes do not cry.
The birds all sing in dialect,
old miners breathe like dukes.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

Tell me it isn’t feudal,
that castles were built for us.
We never touch the forelock,
bend to scrape up dust.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

Your pretty girls don’t stink of slaughter,
your eyes don’t blur with myth.
You’re as equal as a duchess,
saints never smell of piss.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

Your roots are in this valley,
you were never from doon south.
You never hide your birthplace,
you’re a real poet of the north.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

The churches are not crumbling,
the congregations glow with hope.
We are different from the foreigner,
our poetry rhymes with wine.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

There is no landed gentry,
no homes locals can’t afford.
There’s no army on the moors,
the Romans freed us all.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

That the hurt is in the past,
the future holds no war.
Home rule is at our fingertips,
the Coquet swims with love.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

‘The Garden’ is our children’s,
Hotspur spurs us on.
The seagulls are not soaked in oil,
the cows are not diseased.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

This Kingdom is United,
‘Culture’ is our God.
Everyone’s a Basil Bunting freak,
there’s music everywhere.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

We will have our independence,
we’ll get the Gospels back.
We live off museums and tourists,
we don’t need boats or trades.

Tell me lies about Northumberland.

We’re in charge of our own futures,
we have north east citizens here.
In this autonomous republic,
we’re free as dicky birds.

So shut your eyes.

And tell me lies

about Northumberland.




KEITH ARMSTRONG
 

AUTUMNAL SONNET - NEW FROM DAVE ALTON

Autumnal Sonnet

Unbidden autumn strews dunned-down gardens

With tree-shed tatters of summer passing,

Grey-boned boughs, by this rough undressing,

Are shrouded in mantles of mist again.

Children, armed with throwing sticks, set to then

To conquer horse chestnuts, wrest the blessing

Of their bristled fruit, and by amassing

Wins prove the hardness of the seed within.

Fallen apples perish beneath dense skies,

Wind snatched from blustered branches, while dankness

Saturates the chilled air. Encroaching night

Dulls this fading view in age wearied eyes

Looking out with quiet, resigned distress

At such incremental loss of the light.

Dave Alton

THE GOLDEN ROOM BY DR KEITH ARMSTRONG

 



















THE GOLDEN ROOM

‘Was it for nothing that the little room,
All golden in the lamplight, thrilled with golden
Laughter from hearts of friends that summer night?’ (Wilfrid Gibson)

I’m as happy as a daffodil
this day;
sunshine flows around me
over fences,
leaping
with the joy of my poetry.

I am Lord Pretty Field,
a tipsy aristocrat of verse,
become full of myself
and country booze
in the Beauchamp Arms.

Under branches frothy with blossom,
I carry a torch from Northumberland
for Wilfrid Gibson
and his old mates;
for Geraldine
I bear
my Cheviot heart
in Gloucester ciderlight.

We can only catch
a petal from the slaughter,
a bloom
to ease the melancholy
of a Dymock dusk;
hear laughter
over the gloomy murmurs
of distant wars.

A swirling rook cries out
across St Mary’s spire
in dialect
as I climb
back to my White House room
to dream of an England gone,
and a flash of whisky
with Abercrombie.

For Wilfrid you are still
‘a singing star’,
drenched in balladry;
and this I know:
I will keep your little songs alive
in this Golden Room in my heart
and, in my Hexham’s market place,
rant for you
and cover
all our love
with streaming daffodils.


KEITH ARMSTRONG




HEXHAM’S ‘PEOPLE’S POET’: Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962)

‘Heather land and bent-land,
Black land and white,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land of my delight.

Land of singing waters,
And winds from off the sea,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I would be.

Heather land and bent-land,
And valleys rich with corn,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I was born.’


Wilfrid Gibson, author of poems like ‘Flannan Isle’, ‘The Ice Cart’, and ‘The Drover’s Road’, was born in Battle Hill Terrace, Hexham, on October 2nd 1878, the son of a Fore Street chemist. He grew up under the guidance of an elder sister who was responsible for much of his education.
Not much is known about his early years except for a distinct gift for language and a desire to be a poet.
His first book of poetry was published at the age of 24 and entitled ‘The Golden Helm’. Similarly romantic was his next book, ‘Urlyn the Harper’, published two years later. This was followed, in 1907, by ‘Stonefields’ which depicted the strength and atmosphere of Northumberland and the Borders, and then ‘Daily Bread’, issued in 1910, which went into a third printing, partly because of its down-to-earth style proving that there was a market for poems on everyday life which people could relate to. Gibson had ceased writing pseudo-Tennysonian verse and had begun to write realistic poetry in which he attempted to reflect the speech of ordinary people, based on events stemming from everyday life in Northumberland and eleswhere.
In the summer of 1912, Gibson left Hexham for London to broaden his literary horizons and never returned to his native town, except for very occasional visits. He moved to Dymock in Gloucestershire in 1914 to join a group of poets and his new bride went with him, Geraldine Townshend (secretary of poet Harold Munro of the Poetry Bookshop in London), who he had married in Dublin in December 1913. One of the Dymock Poets, the American Robert Frost, said of Gibson that ‘he is much talked of in America at the present time. He’s just one of the plain folks with none of the marks of the literary poseur about him’. The poet Rupert Brooke affectionately nicknamed him ‘Wibson’.
He was turned down by the Army because of his shaky health and poor eyesight but was recruited to the war effort in 1917 when he served as a clerical worker in the Army Service Corps. Shortly beforehand, he had embarked upon a successful reading tour of America.
In war and in peace, he tried to capture the lives of ordinary people and he acquired a reputation as a poet who identified with the urban poor and who understood the harshness of the lives of working people, what he called ‘the heartbreak in the heart of things’.
‘Wibson’ continued to publish a selection of poems every two years or so until 1950 and he still went on reading and lecturing tours around Britain, despite money problems and the aches and pains of rheumatism and fibrositis. But his work declined greatly in popularity and is scarcely known today.  He had written to Robert Frost in 1939 that ‘I am one of those unlucky writers whose books have predeceased him’.
He died at Virginia Water in Surrey in a nursing home on 26th May 1962, aged 83.




O YOU WHO DRINK MY COOLING WATERS CLEAR
FORGET NOT THE FAR HILLS FROM WHENCE THEY FLOW
WHERE OVER FELL AND MOORLAND YEAR BY YEAR
SPRING SUMMER AUTUMN WINTER COME AND GO
WITH SHOWERING SUN AND RAIN AND STORM AND SNOW
WHERE OVER THE GREEN BENTS FOREVER BLOW
THE FOUR FREE WINDS OF HEAVEN WHERE TIME FALLS
IN SOLITARY PLACES CALM AND SLOW
WHERE PIPES THE CURLEW AND THE PLOVER CALLS
BENEATH THE OPEN SKY MY WATERS SPRING
BENEATH THE CLEAR SKY WELLING FAIR AND SWEET
A DRAUGHT OF COOLNESS FOR YOUR THIRST TO BRING
A SOUND OF COOLNESS IN THE BUSY STREET



Inscription by W.W.Gibson on north side of The Temperley Memorial Fountain of 1901 in Hexham Market Place