THE SUN ON DANBY GARDENS

The sun on Danby Gardens
smells of roast beef,
tastes of my youth.
The flying cinders of a steam train
spark in my dreams.
Across the old field,
a miner breaks his back
and lovers roll in the ditches,
off beaten tracks.
Off Bigges Main,
my grandad taps his stick,
reaches for the braille of long-dead strikes.
The nights
fair draw in
and I recall Joyce Esthella Antoinette Giles
and her legs that reached for miles,
tripping over the stiles
in red high heels.
It was her and blonde Annie Walker
who took me in the stacks
and taught me how to read
the signs
that led inside their thighs.
Those Ravenswood girls
would dance into your life
and dance though all the snow drops
of those freezing winters,
in the playground of young scars.
And I remember freckled Pete
who taught me Jazz,
who pointed me to Charlie Parker
and the edgy bitterness of Brown Ale.
Mrs Todd next door
was forever sweeping
leaves along the garden path
her fallen husband loved to tread.
Such days:
the smoke of A4 Pacifics in the aftermath of war,
the trail of local history on the birthmarked street.
And I have loved you all my life
and will no doubt die in Danby Gardens
where all my poems were born,
just after midnight.


KEITH ARMSTRONG

Michael Callaghan:  Absolutely brilliant Keith!
Conrad Atkinson: Another gem Keith Best Conrad 

THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE RAT

he’s the chief executive rat
the chief executive of this and that
the chief executive of want and waste
the chief executive of bad taste
the chief executive brat

she’s the chief executive of style
the chief executive bitch of bile
the chief executive of cluster bombs
the chief executive CD Rom
the chief executive of Sieg Heil 

we’re the chief executives of empty culture
the chief executives of soulless sculpture
the chief executives of soundbites
the chief executives of red kites 
the chief executive vultures

chief exective emptiness
chief executive battledress
chief executive cocktails
chief executive entrails
chief executive stress

he’s the chief executive slave employer
the chief executive missile deployer
the chief executive of civilian targets
the chief executive of hypermarkets
the chief executive life destroyer

she’s the chief executive smirker
the chief executive charity worker
the chief executive of state terror
the chief executive of trial and error
the chief executive empty talker

chief executive workfare
chief executive homecare
chief executive meals on wheels
chief executive easy deals
chief executive warfare

chief executive warfare
chief executive war

chief executive war






keith armstrong

WILLIAM BLAKE IN THE BRIDGE HOTEL

A few pints of Deuchars and my spirit is soaring.
The child dances out of me,
goes running down to the Tyne,
while the little man in me wrestles with a lass
and William Blake beams all his innocence in my glass.
And the old experience sweats from a castle’s bricks
as another local prophet takes a jump off the bridge.

It’s the spirit of Pat Foley and the ancient brigade
on the loose down the Quayside stairs
in a futile search,
just a step in the past,
for one last revolutionary song.

All the jars we have supped
in the hope of a change;
all the flirting and courting and chancing downstream;
all the words in the air and the luck pissed away.
It seems we oldies are running back
screaming to the Bewick days,
when a man could down a politicised quip
and craft a civilised chat
before he fed the birds
in the Churchyard.

The cultural ships are fair steaming in
but it’s all stripped of meaning -
the Councillors wade
in the shallow end.

O Blake! buy me a pint in the Bridge again,
let it shiver with sunlight
through all the stained windows,
make my wit sparkle
and my knees buckle.

Set me free of this stifling age
when the bland are back in charge.
Let us grow our golden hair wild once more
and roar like Tygers
down Dog Leap Stairs.

 


KEITH ARMSTRONG

TUEBINGEN/DURHAM LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING - FROM MARGIT ALDINGER:

TUEBINGEN/DURHAM LITERARY/ARTS TWINNING - FROM MARGIT ALDINGER:



  Town twinning, or city partnering, is designed to bring people together. The university towns of Tübingen and County Durham have been doing this since 1969, promoting cultural exchanges by offering financial and organisational support. Initially, the focus was on pupil exchange programmes and musical collaborations. In 1986, Keith Armstrong and Durham County Council opened a new door by suggesting writer’s exchange. This door became a swing door that has been swinging back and forth since 1987. Over the past thirty years, Keith Armstrong has been committed to ensuring that the door continues to swing in both directions. He took the first step by performing his poems in Tübingen to provide a view of the landscape and the people of its partner county in Northern England; a coal mining area experiencing a time of change, and of Britain's role in the world.

What do guests from County Durham find in Tübingen?: a mecca for literature enthusiasts: old and new authors who share a connection with the city; the Tübingen Book Festival, students from across the globe, a poetics lecture series at the university, literary museums (Sara Hauser who was born in 1986 and who read her own work in Durham in 2014, organises literary evenings with young poets in the Hesse Cabinet), a public library in the town centre, a creative writing scene, students at the Literature and Theatre Studio who publish alternative online literature magazines, and the newly established writers’ collective, the ‘Dichterkammer’ (Chamber of poets), which is open to all and was founded and developed by several of the authors featured in the recent anthology 'Word Sharing'. A trip to Durham with the opportunity to present their own texts became an attractive prospect for them.

   The authors from Tübingen have discovered that County Durham offers many writers' workshops and publication opportunities, even for unknown authors. Keith Armstrong provided ever new venues for the guests from Tübingen: at schools throughout the county, in the main Durham library, at Durham and Newcastle Universities and, of course, also in pubs.

   Most of the authors from Durham are globetrotters who are open to experiencing Tübingen – just like their counterparts from Tübingen who are seeking to explore County Durham. Keith Armstrong has documented his particular love for Tübingen and his interest in the city’s poets, philosophers, streets, squares, buildings and history in numerous poems, some published in 2007 in his book “Hermann Hesse in the Gutter”.

    Armstrong also impresses with his performances – speaking rhythmically, almost song-like, in a standing position – winning over audiences, be it in a pub or on a poetic walk through places in the city that are featured in his work, often accompanied by a musician from County Durham, such as guitarist Gary Miller, or his friend, accordionist Peter Weiss from Tübingen. The individual performance skills of his English colleagues are every bit as developed as his own.

    We hope there will be further word sharing opportunities that can overcome any borders.



Margit Aldinger,

Kulturamt, Tuebingen.

NEWCASTLE: A POETIC STROLL

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)

WILLIAM BLAKE IN THE BRIDGE HOTEL


A few pints of Deuchars and my spirit is soaring.

The child dances out of me,

goes running down to the Tyne,

while the little man in me wrestles with a lass

and William Blake beams all his innocence in my glass.

And the old experience sweats from a castle’s bricks

as another local prophet takes a jump off the bridge.

It’s the spirit of Pat Foley and the ancient brigade

on the loose down the Quayside stairs

in a futile search,

just a step in the past,

for one last revolutionary song.

All the jars we have supped

in the hope of a change;

all the flirting and courting and chancing downstream;

all the words in the air and the luck pissed away.

It seems we oldies are running back

screaming to the Bewick days,

when a man could down a politicised quip

and craft a civilised chat

before he fed the birds

in the Churchyard.

The cultural ships are fair steaming in

but it’s all stripped of meaning -

the Councillors wade

in the shallow end.

O Blake! buy me a pint in the Bridge again,

let it shiver with sunlight

through all the stained windows,

make my wit sparkle

and my knees buckle.

Set me free of this stifling age

when the bland are back in charge.

Let us grow our golden hair wild once more

and roar like Tygers

down Dog Leap Stairs.

KEITH ARMSTRONG





GRAINGER MARKET

 
(1)

A city
within a city

light cage

bazaar and blind
these swollen alleys


flow with a teeming life’s blood

Geordie  !

Swim for your life  !




(2)

this is life
the gloss and the flesh
weigh-house of passion and flame

you can get lost in this market’s amazement
but you can never lose yourself

sometimes
a sleep-walk in these grazing crowds
can feel like a stroll through your brain




 
MAUD WATSON, FLORIST

bred in a market arch

a struggle

in a city’s armpit

that flower

in your time-rough hand’s

a beautiful girl in a slum alley

all that kindness in your face

and you’re right

the time are not what they were

this England’s not what it was

flowers shrink in the crumbling vase

dusk creeps in on a cart

and Maud the sun is choking

Maud this island’s sinking

and all that sleeping sea is

the silent majority

waving

Keith Armstrong

GREY’S MONUMENT

 
Grey –
this man and his brain’s conception,
clasped in stone.
Disdainful figure
raised
on a firm dry finger;
proud-stiff
above a time-bent avenue of dwindling lights.

The Earl’s pale forehead is cool and cloudy;
unblinking,
he views us all (as we view him)
in the same old, cold, way –
through the wrong end of a battered telescope,
through the dusty lens of history.

Strip away the tinsel
and this city’s heart is stone.



Keith Armstrong




BLACK GATE


Black Gate,
an oxter of history,
reaches for me
with a stubby finger,
invites me into Old Newcastle,
its vital cast
of craggy characters,
Garth urchins,
dancing blades
and reeling lasses.
Black Gate,
I can read
the lines
on your brow,
the very grit
on your timelined walls,
the furrowed path
down the Geordie lane
where Alexander Stephenson stoops
to let me in
and the merchant Patrick Black
still trades in memories.
Once
there was a tavern
inside you,
that’s why
the bricks cackle
and the windows creak
with the crack of old ale
and the redundant patter
of publican John Pickell.
Black Gate,
you could say
my childhood is in your stones,
my mother and father figures,
my river
of drifting years,
waiting to greet me.
Hoist up your drawbridge,
in the startling chill
of a Tyne dawn,
this boy is with you
and with himself
in this home city
of old bones,
new blood
and dripping dreams.



KEITH ARMSTRONG

*The Black Gate is named after the seventeenth century merchant Patrick Black.




CASTLE KEEP


Keep,
this history by the river.
Keep,
the stairway to the past.
Keep,
the memories singing folk songs.
Keep,
the cobbles wet with blood.
Keep,
those ballads down the centuries.
Keep,
the ancient voices in your head.
Keep,
these stones alive with music.
Keep,
the wind howling in the brick.
Keep
the days that speed our lives.
Keep,
the rails to guide you there.
Keep,
the people that you meet.
Keep,
the children's faces dancing.
Keep,
the devil in your fleeting eyes.
Keep,
the bridges multiplying.
Keep,
the moon upon the Tyne.
Keep,
the flag of lovers flying.
Keep,
your feet still
Geordie hinny.


 
KEITH ARMSTRONG

THE SUN ON DANBY GARDENS


The sun on Danby Gardens
smells of roast beef,
tastes of my youth.
The flying cinders of a steam train
spark in my dreams.
Across the old field,
a miner breaks his back
and lovers roll in the ditches,
off beaten tracks.
Off Bigges Main,
my grandad taps his stick,
reaches for the braille of long-dead strikes.
The nights
fair draw in
and I recall Joyce Esthella Antoinette Giles
and her legs that reached for miles,
tripping over the stiles
in red high heels.
It was her and blonde Annie Walker
who took me in the stacks
and taught me how to read
the signs
that led inside their thighs.
Those Ravenswood girls
would dance into your life
and dance though all the snow drops
of those freezing winters,
in the playground of young scars.
And I remember freckled Pete
who taught me Jazz,
who pointed me to Charlie Parker
and the edgy bitterness of Brown Ale.
Mrs Todd next door
was forever sweeping
leaves along the garden path
her fallen husband loved to tread.
Such days:
the smoke of A4 Pacifics in the aftermath of war,
the trail of local history on the birthmarked street.
And I have loved you all my life
and will no doubt die in Danby Gardens
where all my poems were born,
just after midnight.


 
KEITH ARMSTRONG

NEWCASTLE IS PICARDY

 





Grainger Street hums

and bakes

in the peeling sunshine;

this walled, world weary city

adopts a certain Latin glow:

car drivers swear more brilliantly,

girls giggle louder

and trap my eyes

in the flash

of their hair.

The world is simply

passing us by.

And who cares,

in this haze

of a burning Empire?

So long as

the sunbeams 

swim

in our beer

and the roses

are blooming

in Picardy.


KEITH ARMSTRONG

LANGE GASSE 18

LANGE GASSE 18

The leaves blow through the glass
as dreams float in the room
and people I have travelled with
climb up these timbered stairs.
Memories coat the walls,
days wander down the lane;
there is no telling where the tales
of drunken nights have gone.
Church bells punctuate the moon,
screams open up the dawn,
and I see Jennifer lying there,
poems oozing from her smiles.
At morning, Ingrid, with her little hands,
brings coffee to my brain
and Karin calls at evening’s door
with wine to ease the pain.
All these dancing moments,
the dripping down of hours;
this house’s chest is heaving
with the loss of human touch.
I drink those sunken days
and know the gulps are fleeting
but the moonlight-stains on the empty bed
will show we bled
for love.

 
THE OLD TUEBINGEN SLAUGHTERHOUSE


What ghosts of Swabian poets
hang here?
What dripping carcasses of words
soak its skin?
Death butchers us all
and turns our pompous dreams
to dried shreds.
Through the dark beams,
the ghosts of Uhland and Moerike
stalk the pigeon-infested morning;
their lyrics breathe
through the dying day.
What dead history?
What living sleepwalks
creak the bloody stairs?
The bells toll through the dust
of long-lost traders;
the startled bats shriek though the rafters
and swifts rush
across the plains of ancient graves.
Hoelderlin is howling still:
the pain of his madness
cuts memories into the wood.
My heart is teeeming with the Neckar,
swarming with the blood of others.
Cut me up.
Slash at my poet’s veins,
my crooked hat hides my fading eyes.
My soul is walking through the Seminary,
taking a pils in Hades
searching for my old friend Horst.
As I sing poetry to old priests,
boats slide along the river,
full of slaughtered tunes.
The lonely choir in the Market Place
speaks of old men rotted on battlefields,
speaks of young men who never learn
and the girls who fall for them.


KEITH ARMSTRONG,
                                                                                 
Tuebingen, Germany.

Photo: Otto Buchegger

EVERYBODY'S GOT LOVE BITES BUT ME

EVERYBODY’S GOT LOVE BITES BUT ME

In this two-bit town
It’s once bitten twice shy
Chewing streets up and down
My tongue’s asking “Why?”

My teeth are on edge
No work and no necking
Just sucking this ledge
No future worth wrecking

Nothing to say
No reason to pray
Wish something lovely would hit me
Everybody’s got love bites but me

In the back of my mouth
There’s a taste of success
And word has it down south
You can talk oral sex

But in this dingy town
My lips are all cracked
Speechless at home
All sleepless and sacked

Nothing to say
No reason to pray
Wish something lovely would hit me
Everybody’s got love bites but me



KEITH ARMSTRONG

GOOD MORNING LINCOLN!

Now the dust has settled on our fabulous Friday night - you should get a copy of Wallington Morning. It’s a superb collection of poems from a superb poet. Available on Amazon. Treat yourself!

(Richard Daniels, Lincoln poetry organiser)

(photo: Peter Dixon)



THE LINCOLN IMP

I fear the devilry in my poetry,
that impish urge
to home in on your fat cathedral
across all those bleak and wasted fields.
Tonight, I want
to ransack your city’s brains,
throw out pathetic gargoyles
from The Jolly Brewer,
beat up the landlord
of the Dog & Bone
with a good dose
of love poems.
I must admit
I am prone to heckle.
Bouts of doubt
infect my lines
and I am frequently inclined
to disrupt
your tedious tales;
for, unlike your buxom church,
they do not ring
with any bleeding sense of history,
just the shallow trivia
of an alien High Street,
the cloistered emptiness
of a bad poet’s soul.
Out here,
in the light of your cock spire,
I leap to twin with the Lincoln Imp
so that no choirboy
need be safe
from our wicked songs
and dodgy rhymes.
Twilight it is, and we zoom
from church to prison,
spreading our evil,
high as lords.
We set up our cheek
at terrible literary gatherings,
bloodstain the floors
of icy classrooms.
This is what imps do -
close down arts centres,
ignite recitals,
slink around alleyways
for bad girls to spank,
hurl abuse at the vicar’s cloth ears.
We imps do believe that
in Lincoln,
or any other northern dreamworld,
you might as well be totally unfeeling
as stay stone sober
in all the daytime’s lovelight.


KEITH ARMSTRONG

FALLING IN LOVE IN THE CAFE PICCOLO

I am crouched over my sparkling glass
waiting for the sunshine to come through
to join me on a winter’s day in Tuebingen,
for a leaf to fly through the door
and show me its intricate patterns
in my penetrating stare,
to skip and dance
and float away

like me
in a trance
in a delicate romance,
a rush of poems,
a sudden surge of booklets
in my travelling bag,
a dream packed into a KLM briefcase;
the tightness of a blue skirt,
the glance of a flashing winged eye
heading towards me,
threatening to make love to me,
to blow away this dark news
pushing its way into my anxious face
from a complete stranger’s daily paper.

And Juergen is rocking tonight in a corner,
sharing his energy with the moon
and I have the smell of a coffee on my sleeve,
the evil taste of last night’s schnapps
on this stooped boy’s lips,
the hysterical melancholy that only Tuebingen brings me;
along the cobbled path outside the Piccolo window
prances chance
and that girl I’ll never ever know
teasing the slipping tears into my scribbles,
her picture forever in my twitching English heart

saying:

‘Ciao!
I’m never really going to leave this town.’

A delicate grip
on reality.





KEITH ARMSTRONG

Tuebingen,
November 2017.

THE WOODEN DOLLIES OF NORTH SHIELDS - NEW POEMS FROM A NEW PROJECT

Our Dolly


Like her sisters before her, she’s
more than a figurehead, fishwife

or a painted charm for good luck.
Our Dolly doesn’t take kindly
to being gawped at and mocked
by rowdy folk who take liberties,
pose for selfies and pocket pieces
of Dolly to take home. A different story
if you’re about to go to sea, she will
protect you, be a beacon to bring you
back home safely. Our bonny lass
Dolly watches over the beloved Tyne,
she bears our proud history, a lifetime
of industry, shipbuilding, hard graft and coal.


Catherine Graham

 
A Girl In Every Port Of Call


With duty done, the hammocks swing with talk of waiting girls,
A familiar name rings out in every sea salty heart:
Mine is called 'Dolly' ……. mine is called Dolly too.
I sleep with her under my pillow, I dream of her every night,… I do too.
I know she keeps me safe,….. I know that too.
Dolly will be waiting for me on the North Shields quay, even after dark…. mine will be too.
Dolly loves me, I keep her pressed close to my chest,… Dolly loves me and my chest too.
But does Dolly really yearn for all her besotted beaus?
Does she grieve alone when the Luttine bell tolls?
Or, does she cast another sweeping, mysterious spell across the wide divide?
Eagerly anticipating the cut of a keen new blade that will once more take her out to sea?
Will she mourn when the great oceans give up their many sunken souls?
Will the knife-wielding, rival suitors clash over Dolly’s unrequited love?
Will loving dissection and briny erosion completely dispel Dolly’s contagious myth?
Only the inscrutable, waiting Dollies know.
After all, this is their seafaring tale,
And they are saying nothing.


ROBERT LONSDALE

The new girl on the block

In 1958 the ghosts of past dollies

gather up their skirts and their baskets

and their warnings and rush

to Northumberland Square

to warn the newcomer

about men with knives

They stand in a cosy huddle

comparing wounds and scars

and talk of cuts here

and spelks there

and whether it did any good

and was it bloody worth it

They try to persuade the new lass

to come down to the Jungle

for a few drinks and whatever else

might arise but she says

she might join them later,

mebbes in sixty years or so.

 

ROB WALTON 

THE LINCOLN IMP!

THE WOODEN DOLLIES OF NORTH SHIELDS BOOK LAUNCH

VEITCH

 


 







(in memory of Colin Campbell McKechnie Veitch, 1881-1938)

‘One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.’ George Bernard Shaw 

Football brain,

you thought with your feet,

treading the boards

in a dynamic theatre

of passing action.

A winning way,

love of the glorious day 

and a sense of history

from Heaton Park

to socialism.

Your story,

from the pulsing Tyne

to the Geordie trophy room,

keeps us hoping

on Gallowgate,

alive with dignity

and strong respect

for the ideal of community

and the black and white love

of fairness.

Battling away,

in a skilled midfield 

and in the stinking trenches,

you fought

for your troubled lilting city

and all of those 

who ever kicked a ball

in its intimate soulful avenues.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Colin Veitch made a total of 322 appearances for Newcastle United, scoring 49 goals. He  captained the United side which won League Championships in 1905, 1907 and 1909, the FA Cup in 1910 and were FA Cup finalists in 1905, 1906, 1908 and 1911, and also represented England on 6 occasions.