NORTH TYNESIDE STEAM

Photo by Tony Whittle

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.

CONTRIBUTIONS ARE SOUGHT BY LOCAL PEOPLE. PLEASE SEND ANY POEMS, STORIES, PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS ABOUT GEORGE STEPHENSON, BLUCHER AND KILLINGWORTH AND STEAM RAILWAYS IN NORTH TYNESIDE BY THE END OF JUNE 2014 TO DR KEITH ARMSTRONG AT 93 WOODBURN SQUARE, WHITLEY LODGE, WHITLEY BAY, TYNE & WEAR NE26 3JD. TEL. 2529531 or email to: k.armstrong643@btinternet.com

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With historical documents and images, alongside poems, songs, stories, photographs and drawings by local people, the book is intended to ensure that the story of steam in North Tyneside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

http://www.northernvoicescommunityprojects.co.uk/Northern_Voices_Community_Projects/Welcome.html

YEVTUSHENKO IN NEWCASTLE - SOMETHING WE ORGANISED BACK IN 1976!

HERITAGE OPEN DAYS 2014

TYNESIDE SONS: A CELEBRATION OF THOMAS SPENCE & THOMAS BEWICK

Join the Thomas Spence Trust and Northern Voices Community Projects in marking and celebrating the bicentenary of Thomas Spence (1750-1814). On September 11th 2014, poems, stories and songs will be performed at the site of the Spence plaque on Broad Garth at 14.00 and then readings from his work and that of his friend and sparring partner Thomas Bewick with poems and songs inspired by both of them will be performed at the Red 
House, Newcastle at 19.30 (over 18s only).

TUEBINGEN TWINNED WITH DURHAM!

TUEBINGEN/DURHAM LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING

The partnership with County Durham and the City of Tuebingen in South Germany was established in 1969.  

Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong, who gained his doctorate at the University on Durham in 2007, following on from Bachelor's and Master's degrees there, first visited Tuebingen in November 1987, with the support of the County Council and the Kulturamt in Tuebingen, to give readings and talks there for a period of a month. Since then he has travelled to the city over 30 times and helped arrange for Durham poets, musicians and artists and their counterparts in Tuebingen to visit their respective cultural twins.

Doctor Armstrong was back in Tuebingen from Wednesday 2nd to Saturday 5th April 2014 with artist/photographer Peter Dixon for readings with Tuebingen writers Eva Christina Zeller, Sara Hauser, Tibor Schneider and Florian Neuner at Weinhaus Beck, a school visit and other networking initiatives. This followed on from his visit from Monday 4th November to Thursday 7th 2013 when he took part in a major symposium on the theme of writer Hermann Hesse who lived and worked in Tuebingen from 1895-1899. As well as joining in with the discussions and giving a reading from his poems on Hesse and Tuebingen, Keith met with poets, academics, teachers, musicians, cultural and media workers.  

Sara Hauser visited Durham from Monday 12th to Thursday 15th May 2014 for sessions at the University's English and German Departments  and meetings with local writers, artists and musicians.

So the twinning continues to go from strength to strength. Looking back on things, 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 that 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 returned the compliment with a trip to Tuebingen in March 2013 where they performed again in bars, cafes and schools with poets Tibor Schneider, Sara Hauser and Tuebingen 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, Sara Hauser.

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.

YOU'VE GOT TO BE JOKING

if you think this is democracy,

this quango land

insult to our history,

this emptiness

of false celebrity,

this wretched shallowness,

this shattered ignorance

of all that shines from our fought-for heritage,

this media connivence

and bone idleness,

this following of the fast buck,

this grovelling to the greed of capital,

this sickening homage to materialism,

this lack of human spirit

in our city centres,

this brutal selfishness

encouraged by a government

that denies our European roots,

that scans the wonder of the vast Atlantic

for feeble ideas to run with,

this rat race of a society

that puts self above solidarity,

these feeble careerist substitutes for activism

who have lost any real will for change,

who have become corrupted by a power-lust,

who lack any passion

other than to climb grimly up their greasy poles,

clinging on to their self-delusion,

ignoring, in their centrist way,

the true beauty of community,

handing out their gongs to the servile

and rubbishing the selfless folk

who work their little miracles every breathing day.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

THE DUKE!

24" x 24" acrylic on board

BRIDGE HOTEL, NEWCASTLE WITH SARA HAUSER FROM TUEBINGEN

PHOTOS: PETER DIXON

TUEBINGEN WRITER SARA HAUSER VISITS DURHAM

    Above: Reading at St Chad's College Chapel, Durham University 14/5/2014

    PHOTOS: KEITH ARMSTRONG

Vita 

Sara Hauser was born in 1986 in Calw (Black Forest). Living in the University City Tübingen, she studies Philosophy, International Literature and Literary Writing. 

In 2012 she received a scholarship from the “First Academy of Reading Arts“. The following year, she and Tübingen‘s poet Tibor Schneider launched “hesse reloaded”, a symposium linking scientific, poetic and musical elements with Hermann Hesse's literary work as well as his relationship to Tübingen. 

Influenced by the “cut-up“ technique, Sara Hauser combines and “recycles“ in her miniature and short prose splinters of films and literature as well as fragments of personal memories to a new entity. Her current writing is inspired by films of Ingmar Bergman and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Additionally, she is influenced by writers like Daniil Charms, Friederike Mayröcker or Albert Camus and his philosophy of absurdism. 

Excerpts of her writing have been published in Tübingen´s magazine for literature and art “]trash[pool ”. 

THE VIEW FROM THE RED HOUSE!

PHOTOS: DR KEITH ARMSTRONG  NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE  TUESDAY 5TH MAY 2014

TUEBINGEN WRITER SARA HAUSER VISITS DURHAM

tuebingen photo: peter dixon

TUEBINGEN/DURHAM LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING

The partnership with County Durham and the City of Tuebingen in South Germany was established in 1969.  

Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong, who gained his doctorate at the University on Durham in 2007, following on from Bachelor's and Master's degrees there, first visited Tuebingen in November 1987, with the support of the County Council and the Kulturamt in Tuebingen, to give readings and talks there for a period of a month. Since then he has travelled to the city over 30 times and helped arrange for Durham poets, musicians and artists and their counterparts in Tuebingen to visit their respective cultural twins.

Doctor Armstrong was back in Tuebingen from Wednesday 2nd to Saturday 5th April 2014 with artist/photographer Peter Dixon for readings with Tuebingen writers Eva Christina Zeller, Sara Hauser, Tibor Schneider and Florian Neuner at Weinhaus Beck, a school visit and other networking initiatives. This followed on from his visit from Monday 4th November to Thursday 7th 2013 when he took part in a major symposium on the theme of writer Hermann Hesse who lived and worked in Tuebingen from 1895-1899. As well as joining in with the discussions and giving a reading from his poems on Hesse and Tuebingen, Keith met with poets, academics, teachers, musicians, cultural and media workers.  

Sara Hauser will visit Durham from Monday 12th to Thursday 15th May 2014 for sessions at the University and meetings with local writers, artists and musicians. 

Her visit has been sponsored by the Cultural Office in Tuebingen and organised by Dr Keith Armstrong and Northern Voices Community Projects with the assistance of Durham County Council's International Office.

Further information: telephone 0191 2529531.

Sara Hauser was born in 1986 in Calw (Black Forest). Living in the University City Tübingen, she studies Philosophy, International Literature and Literary Writing. 

In 2012 she received a scholarship from the “First Academy of Reading Arts“. The following year, she and Tübingen‘s poet Tibor Schneider launched “hesse reloaded”, a symposium linking scientific, poetic and musical elements with Hermann Hesse's literary work as well as his relationship to Tübingen. 

Influenced by the “cut-up“ technique, Sara Hauser combines and “recycles“ in her miniature and short prose splinters of films and literature as well as fragments of personal memories to a new entity. Her current writing is inspired by films of Ingmar Bergman and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Additionally, she is influenced by writers like Daniil Charms, Friederike Mayröcker or Albert Camus and his philosophy of absurdism. 

Excerpts of her writing have been published in Tübingen´s magazine for literature and art “]trash[pool ”. 

sara hauser with dr keith armstrong

                                                                                                 

Armstrong's Trumpet By Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Great Satchmo plays all bathed in sweat,

A salty Niagara pours from his brow,

But when the trumpet rises to the clouds,

It growls and roars.

To the whole world he plays the way he loves,

He is stolen from us by the grave,

he was stolen first before his birth

From his sweet Africa.

In hidden reprise for the chains of his fathers

His music enslaves us all like helpless babes.

The whites of his great eyes flicker in sorrow

As he howls and horns about the globe--

This kid from a children's home

In the town of New Orleans.

Great Satchmo plays all bathed in sweat,

His nostrils smoke like two great muzzles.

Thirty-two white projectors in his mouth,

But the sweat is as natural

As a beautiful mighty hippo

Rising snorting from an African river.

Stamping on fan notes with his heel,

And wiping the downpour from his brow,

he throws handkerchief after handkerchief

Into the piano's open womb.

Again back to the microphone

pressing down on the stage till it cracks,

Each wet handkerchief is as heavy

As the crown of art.

And art is very far from pose,

When it labors it's not ashamed of sweat.

It's not the charm of prattlers

But full of movement of heavy things,

The tragic labor of a trumpet player

Whose music is tatters of lung.

Though art is bartered and sold,

That's not what it's all about.

The poet and the great jazzmen equally

Like brothers cut their gifts to others from soul.

Great Satchmo, will you make it to heaven"?

Who knows!

But if it happens--Play!

let the good times roll once more!

Shake up that boring state of little angels.

But so there'll be no remorse in hell,

So death will cheer us sinners up,

Archangel Gabriel,

Pass your horn to the better player

To Louis!

Translated by Albert C. Todd

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

ARMSTRONG-DIXON IN TUEBINGEN!

TUEBINGEN/DURHAM LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING

The partnership with County Durham and the City of Tuebingen in South Germany was established in 1969.  

Poet Doctor Keith Armstrong, who gained his doctorate at the University on Durham in 2007, following on from Bachelor's and Master's degrees there, first visited Tuebingen in November 1987, with the support of the County Council and the Kulturamt in Tuebingen, to give readings and talks there for a period of a month. Since then he has travelled to the city over 30 times and helped arrange for Durham poets, musicians and artists and their counterparts in Tuebingen to visit their respective cultural twins.

Doctor Armstrong was back in Tuebingen from Wednesday 2nd to Saturday 5th April 2014 with artist/photographer Peter Dixon for readings with Tuebingen poets Eva Christina Zeller, Sara Hauser, Tibor Schneider and Florian Neuner at Weinhaus Beck, a school visit and other networking initiatives. This followed on from his visit from Monday 4th November to Thursday 7th 2013 when  he took part in a major symposium on the theme of writer Hermann Hesse who lived and worked in Tuebingen from 1895-1899. As well as joining in with the discussions and giving a reading from his poems on Hesse and Tuebingen, Keith met with poets, academics, teachers, musicians, cultural and media workers. 

PHOTOS: PETER DIXON

TUEBINGEN AGAIN

I come back to you

when I am feeling hopeless,

when I am in despair of the heartless.

I trail my hefty books through Customs

to reach you,

to plunge into your depths,

to swim in the mystery of your streets,

the beauty of your trees,

the melancholy of your seminar rooms.

Yes, Tuebingen,

it’s me

looking for myself once more

in your troubled mirror.

So I dive

into La Boheme

and back and back and back

into the Boulanger.

So I stagger

out of Hades

and into the arms 

of the Neckarmueller 

to feed the ducks

with scraps of my trembling poetry.

Your Hoelderlin Tower

always makes me feel sad.

My body droops like a weeping willow

as my mad muse floats up river

to liberate new dreams,

to greet fresh friends.

I sail in your skies

in a Lufthansa trance.

Let me sing

of all that’s good in Swabia

for you.

Let me wish your lovely children joy

and then let me break my heart again

when I have to leave you.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

ART OF JAZZ!