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!

CHET - FROM A WINDOW

CHET - FROM A WINDOW

(in memory of Chet Baker, born December 23rd 1929, died May 13th 1988)

The constant onslaught of Amsterdam

surged through Zeedijk

on that hot night

when a full moon

dragged you

flying to your death.

In your room,

in the Prins Hendrik Hotel,

your clothes lay

neatly folded

in your suitcase,

with your body

a foetus on the street below.

Great white hope

fallen

offstage,

a love for heroin never shaken.

Sorrow was your stuff,

a plaintive,

lyrical anguish,

an excess of gloom

and charm.

This undernourished and parched body,

a singing corpse,

searching for an uncollapsed vein,

an expert driver hating the road

and the bleak hotel of his doom.

Such a foolish love.

Oklahoma farmboy on a golden trumpet,

his teeth knocked out in San Francisco,

become chained to an album a day

for a thousand dollars in cash.

And the Italian you learned in a Lucca jail,

your spirit surviving its deportation,

a lonely and melancholy master drifter

whose pianissimo

touched the soul.

Friday 13th May 1988,

Chet’s heart stopped

and his horn

lost its tongue.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

JAZZ POET!

DOCTOR KEITH ARMSTRONG IN PERFORMANCE AT THE GEORGIAN THEATRE, STOCKTON WITH TENOR SAX MAN STEVE WINDROSS

TUEBINGEN & 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 will be back in Tuebingen from Wednesday 2nd to Saturday 5th April 2014 with artist/photographer Peter Dixon for readings with Tuebingen poets Sara Hauser, Tibor Schneider and Florian Neuner at Weinhaus Beck, a school visit and other networking initiatives. This follows 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 poets and at Durham County Council's International Office. 

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.