Le Petit Mall

Just opening, in the Blue Quadrant, “Wedding Tackle”

Promises to be popular with spring coming.

Certainly Mammon has had his interest piqued

And coquettishly chooses a Sunday morning,

Just as church bells are charming their faithful few

Into pews redolent of beeswax and wax-white

Funeral lilies, to go and pay his respects.

Actually, him being the primary demiurge,

Means he’s already well pleased with his creation.

Cathedrals had been a triumph, of course, with them

So obviously heavy with such a great burden

Of stone and gold and jewels, especially those gems

Encrusting saints’ tombs, and yet punters were convinced

They were heavenly places beyond this fallen world,

And they queued, actually queued to pray, so they thought,

But pay is what they really did for a splinter

From the true cross, a phial of holy blood, a lock

In a locket, an immaculate curl, certain

Cure for that universal malady, status.

The very latest, must-have relic, could confer

Sanctimony on whosoever was the first

To show it off to their neighbours: oh that spasm

Of pleasure made it all worthwhile; the pilgrimage

On holy days and the congestion caused, the queues

In the cloisters, aisles packed, priests giving the hard sell;

But, what’s a little purgatory if it secures

Those sought after indulgences? Oh yes, Mammon

Had once considered those ecclesiastical

Enterprises to be a triumph. And yet, now

How jaded, how limited a cathedral appears

Compared with the latest mall, a temple precinct

Complete with ample free parking. Mammon’s amused

That two million years of human evolution

Culminates in shopping: blessed are the consumers

For they have purchased the world on easy credit.

How eagerly the flock flock to gather in jostling

Multitudes to receive the relics of fashion:

Shoppers, you have nothing to lose but your chain stores!

Mammon knows he is worshipped by such devotion

As fetches these folk back and back and back, although

None can quite remember why. And as the hordes hoard

Their purchases, Mammon makes his way through the bright

Crystal labyrinth, in freshened air, offended,

Slightly, by invisible inoffensive music,

To the latest concession: “Wedding Tackle –

The One-stop Shop for all your nuptial needs”. Mammon

Laughs and laughs until he almost has a seizure.  

                                                                                Dave Alton

TOMMY ON THE BRIDGE

You were a miner’s son,

blinded

in the fertile seam they dragged you from

to beg out your time

on the backs of bridges

that joined others

but left you split,

splay-footed between rough stones

and the snapping tomes

of the Law of the Land

and the Water.

Your wore a casual cloth cap

that muffled your bruised head.

Your trousers sagging at your feet,

you filled that dingy trench coat of yours

reluctantly;

resigned to see life life through,

with only coins for eyes

and a bridging loan to buy

derelict clothes.

At Swing or High Level,

you found a market;

a centrepoint for the rich

to lighten their swollen burden

of conscience a trifle.

And you ‘bored’ yourself 

with a dignity that rejected buttons

and accepted only the silver linings

of fat pockets,

bred on a Victorian plenty

and plenty of paupers like you.

You buried your stubbled face

in the crowds that swam the Tyne.

Years across now,

you finally supped

your last cracked gill 

of darkness.

And they picked you

neatly from the swollen gutter;

linked your broken hands at rest

to bridge

an empty chest.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

* Thomas Ferens (1841-1907). Born blind and begged on Newcastle’s High Level & Swing Bridges 

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

Tommy Armstrong (1848-1920)

Tanfield Lea is a former mining village which was home to Tommy Armstrong, who was known as the `Pitman Poet' or the `Bard of the northern coalfield'. He was a miner who wrote songs and poems that tell of life in the Durham area at the turn of the century. He wrote to keep himself in beer money, also he had fourteen children to support. He had his work printed and sold around local public houses for a penny each.

Armstrong's best known works include:

Wor Nanny's a Maizor

The Trimdon Grange Disaster

The Oakey Strike Evictions

Durham Gaol

The Row Between the Cages

The Birth of the Lad

Maria Hill Ducks

Oakey's Keeker

The Durham Lockout

The Sheel Raw Flood

The Hedgehog Pie

The Ghost that Haunted Bunty

The Skuil Board Man

The South Medomsley Strike

The Oakey Strike Evictions tells how, despite the poor and dangerous working conditions, low pay and long hours, the often tyranical mine owners would not hesitate to resort to evictions to deal with miners' strikes. The `candymen' were bailiffs employed by the mine owners to evict the miners. They were brought in from the docks of the large towns. Despite the pleadings from all concerned these hated men would still carry out their evictions of the families.

"It was in November and aw never will forget
How the polisses and the candymen at Oakey Houses met
Johnny the Bellman he was there squintin' roond aboot
And he put three men at ivvery door te' torn the miners oot
And what would a dee if aw had the power mesel'
Aw would hang the twenty candymen and Johnny whe carries the bell"

Mining disasters and colliery explosions were sadly a regular occurrence in those days. The Trimdon Grange Colliery Explosion, which occurred on February 16th 1883, is famous because he recorded the song to raise money in aid of the widows and orphans.


Let us not think of tomorrow,
Lest we disappointed be;
All our joys may turn to sorrow,
As we all may daily see.
Today we may be strong and healthy,
But how soon there comes a change
As we may learn from the explosion.
That has been at Trimdon Grange.

Men and boys left home that morning.
For to earn their daily bread.
Little thought before that evening
That they’d be numbered with the dead;
Let us think of Mrs Bumett,
Once had sons but now has none.
By the Trimdon Grange explosion.
Joseph George and James are gone.

February left behind it
What will never be forgot;
Weeping widows, helpless children,
May he found in many a cot,
Homes that once were blest with comfort,
Guarded by a father’s care,
Now are solemn, sad and gloomy,
Since the father is not there.

Little children, kind and and loving,
From their homes each day would run
Far to meet their father’s coming,
As each hard day’s work was done.
Now they ask if father’s left them.
Then the mother hangs her head
With a weeping widows feelings.
Tells the child that father’s dead."

God protect the lonely widow,
Help to raise each drooping head;
Be a father to the orphans,
Never let them cry for bread.
Death will pay us all a visit,
They have only gone before;
We may meet the Trimdon victims
Where explosions are no more.

the blaydon races by the blaydon aces!

TUEBINGEN/DURHAM LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING

The twinning continues to go from strength to strength. Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong and folk-rock musician Gary Miller, lead singer of Durham band the Whisky Priests, travelled to Tuebingen at the end of March 2012 for performances in pubs, cabaret venues and schools where they performed with Tuebingen poet Tibor Schneider who visited Durham in October of this year as part of the ongoing exchange. Tibor joined his Durham counterparts for readings at Durham University and at the Half Moon Inn. He was also interviewed on BBC Radio Tees concerning his Durham visit.

Keith Armstrong and Gary Miller will return the compliment with a trip to Tuebingen in March 2013 where they will perform again in bars, cafes and schools with Tibor Schneider and other Tuebingen poets and musicians. 

In 2011, Tuebingen rock musician Juergen Sturm jetted in with his music partner Mary Jane at the end of October for pub gigs, including a twinning event in Durham on Monday 31st October featuring Juergen and Mary Jane with Durham folk musicians and poets. That followed on from a visit to Tuebingen in South Germany in early April 2011 by Keith Armstrong and photographer/artist Peter Dixon. The intrepid pair worked together on a touring display featuring Armstrong's poems and Dixon's photographs documenting the unique link between Tuebingen and Durham which was staged initially in the Durham Room at County Hall, Durham in November. Armstrong performed his poetry in cafes, bars and schools and met up with Tuebingen friends, old and new, with the multi-talented Dixon capturing all of it on film. 

This trip reciprocated a visit to Durham in November 2010 by Tuebingen poets Henning Ziebritzki and Carolyn Murphey Melchers, when Juergen Stuerm also took part in a series of pub performances. There was a special event at Clayport Library, Durham City on Monday November 1st with the Tuebingen poets and special guests from Durham, followed by a rousing session in the Dun Cow when Juergen, with Mary Jane, and his Durham counterparts, Gary Miller and Marie Little belted out their lively songs.

In addition to his most recent visit, Armstrong was in Tuebingen in May 2010 with Gary Miller for performances in his favourite Tuebingen bar ‘The Boulanger’ and at a local school. This followed a special guest appearance in 2009 at the biannual Book Festival, a reading with Tuebingen counterpart Eva Christina Zeller and a visit to local schools. Eva visited Durham for readings in schools and at a special event on May 13th 2009 at Clayport Library which also featured poets Katrina Porteous, Jackie Litherland, Cynthia Fuller, and William Martin, as well as Doctor Armstrong and music from the Durham Scratch Choir and Andy Jackson.

A highly successful series of events were held in 2007 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the literary/arts twinning established by Keith Armstrong when he first visited Tuebingen in 1987 for a month’s residency, supported by Durham County Council and Tuebingen’s Kulturamt. Since then, there have been readings and performances in pubs, universities and castles, schools, libraries, book festivals, jazz and cabaret clubs, even in Hermann Hesse’s old apartment, involving poets, writers, teachers and musicians from the twin partnerships of Durham and Tuebingen.

Tuebingen’s music duo Acoustic Storm, poet/translator Carolyn Murphey Melchers and Cultural Officer visited Durham and the North East in October/November 2007. The musicians performed in Durham schools and pubs and there was a special evening in Durham’s Clayport Library to celebrate the twinning, with Keith Armstrong launching his new Tuebingen poetry booklet and performances by poets Carolyn Murphey Melchers, Katrina Porteous, William Martin, Michael Standen, Ian Horn, Cynthia Fuller, Hugh Doyle and musicians Acoustic Storm, Marie Little and Gary Miller. Margit Aldinger of the Kulturamt in Tuebingen and Brian Stobie of the International Department, Durham County Council, also addressed the audience.

For the record, here's a list of those who have made it happen so far:

Tuebingen visitors to Durham since 1987:

Carolyn Murphey Melchers, Karin Miedler, Gerhard Oberlin, Uwe Kolbe, Johannes Bauer, Eva Christina Zeller, Simone Mittmann, Florian Werner, Juergen Sturm, Mary Jane, Wolf Abromeit, Christopher Harvie, Eberhard Bort, Marcus Hammerschmitt, Henning Ziebritzki, Andy and Alessandra Fazion Marx, Otto Buchegger, Tibor Schneider.

Durham visitors to Tuebingen since 1987:

Keith Armstrong, Michael Standen, Julia Darling, Andy Jackson, Fiona MacPherson, Katrina Porteous, Marie Little, Ian Horn, Alan C. Brown, Linda France, Jackie Litherland, Cynthia Fuller, Margaret Wilkinson, Jez Lowe, Jack Routledge, Gary Miller, Matthew Burge, David Stead, Hugh Doyle, Peter Dixon.

These events were supported by Tuebingen’s Kulturamt and Durham County Council.

FURTHER INFORMATION: NORTHERN VOICES COMMUNITY PROJECTS TEL. 0191 2529531.

Novocastrian Favours

Shades of magpies rising

From Tyne, from banks of Tyne,

From boneyards about churches,

Ancient and modern.

Match day! Mingling with hordes

Of the living

Who only see the world in black ‘n’ white,

Old and young.

“It’s our religion!”

Faith of the damned, the dreamed,

The dinned from birth;

Second hand and new.

Only, the game’s no longer played on turf,

But across spreadsheets.

Sport is a question of balance,

Profit and loss.

And there no fans any more,

Just customers, consumers, clients,

Footfall through the turnstiles,

Win or lose.

Come final whistle the dead return

To their plots and scatterings,

The living live for extra time:

Life and death.

                                          Dave Alton

LIKE THE SPANISH CITY

The days have gone;

the laughter and shrieks

blown away.

We have all grown up,

left old Catalonian dreams 

and the blazing seaside bullfights.

We are dazed,

phased out.

Spaces where we courted

bulldozed

to make way

for the tack of tomorrow;

the hope in the sea breeze;

the distant echo of castanets

and voices scraping

in a dusty rotunda.

I remember where I kissed you,

where I lost you.

It was in Spain, wasn’t it?

Or was it down the Esplanade

on a wet Sunday in July?

Either way,

we are still

twinned with sunny Whitley Bay,

and flaming Barcelona too;

and our lives

will dance in fading photographs

from the pleasure dome,

whenever we leave home.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

POETRY BY HEART!

SKY THE GUIDE DOG

Sky is a guide dog.

He will lick you

into light.

His eyes are pools of sparks.

He is a star hound.

Sky leads us across the universal fields,

opens up the lids of daydreams,

teaches us to feel

those tender rays.

Sky’s vista runs deep,

shows up a braille galaxy.

In this cold, blind dark,

we follow his moonlit trail.

We marry our lonely visions with his

and see

heaven.

KEITH ARMSTRONG 

GOODBYE!

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

NORTHERN INFORMER!

http://northerninformer.co.uk/news/news-select.php?id=19

NVCP Joseph Skipsey Award winners in action!

Two poems by Laurice Gilbert, National Coordinator of the New Zealand Poetry Society.

Percival Street

We proposed over Marcel’s Peppered Steak.

Me first, you first, one or the other.

From the Dixon Street steps

the lights of Wellington shone

at half-mast for the imminent death

of my current relationship;

the one you invaded,

the one I was ready to betray.

A room that should be storing bric-à-brac;

instead a single bed with evidence

the sheets have never been washed.

A succession of overnight guests.

Crestfallen curtains failing to meet;

a communal duvet past its use-by date

hovers over us long enough to disguise

reunion timidity. A minute, maybe three.

Laughter from surrounding student flats.

A couple in the next room argues and

our six-week separation drifts to nothing.

Night life on The Terrace breathes around us.

Scramble of skin meeting skin, face to face,

stomach to stomach. The scent of sensuality.

And the end of the night.

And the going home for breakfast.

So many breakfasts these thirty years,  

though none with the taste of Percival Street

where unwashed sheets and failing curtains

defied the boundaries we thought we knew.

Laurice Gilbert

Safe at Home

Night, and there is nothing outside my bedroom window

No red corrugated iron shed, by day ringing with the sound of Dad’s tools

No aviary of zebra finches peeping into the kitchen window below

No fairy flowers on the fuchsia, no posies on the hydrangea

No washing line to swing from, kicking the top of  Dad’s birthday kowhai

No swing of thick grey pipes from the council tip, carrying me high enough to reach          

the wash-house roof

No square of lawn piled high with leftover wood, sometimes a princess’s castle,       

sometimes a pirate ship

No outside toilet populated by whirling dervish daddy-long-legses

No hole in the side fence where I slip past the leathery taupata to visit Jeannie, who            

feeds me chocolate cup cakes and Robinson’s lime cordial when Mum is in hospital

No hill where the Governor-General lives surrounded by pine trees; where a Bad     

Thing happened to a lady so we are forbidden to play in the spicy darkness with the       

cushioned floor; where the policemen check up on you if you do

It is night so there is nothing outside my bedroom window. Except, of course, for    

passing spaceships flashing their comforting red and green lights.

Laurice Gilbert

AWARD WINNERS

There are 2 winners of the Northern Voices Community Projects Joseph Skipsey Award this year:


Rachel Cochrane - Stocksfield based writer and dramatist and the brains behind the Listen Up North website. Her energy and motivation and the help she has given to the region's writers is phenomenal. This award is well earned and overdue.

Dave Alton - Burnley born Dave has battled away with his poetry for years on Tyneside, his adopted community, and he deserves wider recognition for this efforts. His work is rooted in the traditional folk songs and ballads of the region. With Keith Armstrong he helped establish the innovative Poetry Tyneside blog. Now that he has moved to Barnsley, he will be very much the instigator of Northern Voices Community Projects' enterprises in the Yorkshire area, developing exchange links with Tyneside, as well as maintaining his own commitment to the north east.

Further information: NVCP tel 0191 2529531

www.northernvoicescommunityprojects.co.uk

BURNS NIGHT!

Burns Night with The Black Light Engine Room!!!
Friday, 25 January 2013
19:00 until 23:00

Celebrate Burns Night with BLER by coming along with your poems and getting legless!

Featuring the legendary Keith Armstrong!! Sara Dennis!! Midway Arcadia!!

Blast into the New Year with the Best! £3 entry. 

O'Connells,
29-41 Bedford Street, TS1 2LL Middlesbrough

Singing In the New Year

Here the old year’s put out

There in black bin bags

Where gutters chuckle as tarmac weeps.

Wind plays its horsehair bow

Plaintively across

Strings singing with electricity,

Drawn between pylons.

To the east,

In the middle distance,

A cloud hangs,

Fog forms,

Smoke

Is still rising,

Rising beyond control,

Fanned by ill-winds,

Virtuoso performances

By ensembles of discord and those agents

Pitching

For commission.

Looking back, Janus resolves

Not to look forwards,

Not this time,

Not ever again

As he does every year end,

But, he will of course,

At the first pop of the first firework as first note

Of Auld Lang Syne

Solicits a first kiss for the first of the first.

And he smiles,

As if all those sponges soaked in alcohol

Really do wipe clean the slate,

Really do delete memory.

Cross forearms, join hands

All in a line,

All in a circle,

Raise your glasses,

Raise your voices,

With whiffs of smoke signalling resolutions

Already broken,

Begin (with gusto)

Slinging out the old year,

Singing in the new.

                                                            Dave Alton