Keith Armstrong 

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comments	'Spring': pit pony, 1995	news
	Tuesday March 10th 1761, 1996

BIOGRAPHY

Born in 1946 in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he has worked as a community worker, poet and publisher Keith Armstrong is coordinator of the Northern Voices creative writing and community publishing project which specialises in recording the experiences of people in the North East of England. As well as being organiser of several community arts festivals in the region, and of literary events featuring the likes of Yevtushenko, Douglas Dunn, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Benjamin Zephaniah, and Liz Lochhead, he was founder of the Strong Words and Durham Voices community publishing series and of Tyneside Street Press, and he has recently compiled and edited books on the Durham Miners' Gala and on the former mining communities of County Durham.
He is studying for a PhD on the work of Newcastle writer Jack Common at the University of Durham where he received a Masters Degree in 1998 for his studies on regional culture in the North East of England. He was Year of the Artist 2000 poet-in-residence at Hexham Races. His poetry has been extensively published in magazines such as Poetry Review, Other Poetry, Iron, The Poetry Business, and Poetry Scotland, as well as in the collections The Jingling Geordie, Dreaming North and Pains of Class, on cassette, LP & CD, and on radio & TV. He has also written for music-theatre productions, including 'O'er the Hills' and 'Wor Jackie' (1988) for Northumberland Theatre Company; 'Pig's Meat' (1997 & 2000) for Bruvvers Theatre Company; and 'The Roker Roar' (1998) for Monkwearmouth Youth Theatre Company. Other commissioned work includes 'Fire & Brimstone' (1989) and 'The Hexham
Celebration' (1992), both for the Hexham Abbey Festival; 'Suite for the River Wear' (1989) for BBC Radio; and 'The Little Count' (1993) for Durham County Council. He won the Kate Collingwood Bursary Award in 1986.
He has performed his poetry on several occasions at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at Literature Festivals in Cardiff, Cheltenham, Durham, Lancaster, and throughout the land. He has also toured the former Soviet Union, Iceland (incuding readings during the Cod War), Germany, and The Netherlands to present readings.
He worked as a Community Arts Development Worker in East Durham for 6 years in the 1980s and has long pioneered cultural exchanges with Durham's twinning partners, particularly Tübingen and Nordenham in Germany and Ivry-sur-Seine and Amiens in France, as well as with Newcastle's Dutch twin -city of Groningen. In fact, he has visited Tuebingen some 20 times since he first spent a month there in November 1987 as poet-in-residence supported by Durham County Council and the Kulturamt, and he has performed his poetry in the city's Hölderlin Tower. He has won Northern Arts Awards to visit Berlin in 1990 and in 2001 to pursue his studies of Dutch regional culture. His travels to Denmark, Germany, Holland and Sweden have also been supported by the British Council. He was the Judge for the Sid Chaplin Short Story Awards in 2000.
He often works with folk-musicians from North East England, including Jez Lowe, Marie Little, and George Welch, and he has written the lyrics for an album by folk-rock band 'The Whisky Priests', with whom he has toured extensively in The Netherlands. Another album is planned for 2002. He has also visited the European Parliament in Strasbourg to perform his poetry with musicians Pete Challoner and Ian Carr. Though a regionalist inspired by the landscape of his birth, he is very much a European and his work is much influenced by writers such as Hölderlin, Hesse, Brecht,
Baudelaire, Prevert, Esenin, and Mayakovsky.

See www.google.com to learn more about Keith Armstrong.

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KEITH ARMSTRONG - SOME COMMENTS:

'No one in the North East has written and read and encouraged and organised so consistently and over so long a period as Keith Armstrong. His poetry is different, original, and politically exhilarating.'
(Andy Croft)

'There is an exciting sense of releasing the dreams and perceptions from the 'wee corners' of his mind - and the result is the honesty, humanity, sharpness of vision and richness of humour which he makes available for readers to share.'
(Professor Helen Wilcox, Head of English Department, University of Groningen)

'Keith's poems raised goose pimples but also thoughts about today's culture.'
(Peter Lewis, Hexham Courant)

'The British Council considers itself fortunate indeed to work in collaboration with Keith who has enabled those who have connections with the British Council to learn something of the local identity and heritage as well as the international dimension which Keith brings to his work.'
(Jan Long, Regional Manager, Yorkshire and the North East, The British Council)

'Keith made a lot of things possible for myself and many others like me. I don't mind admitting that without Keith I would have given up poetry as a waste of life years ago.'
(Kevin Cadwallender)

'There are those who tell the terrible truth in all its loveliness. Keith Armstrong is one of them, a fine poet who refuses to turn his back on the wretched of the Earth. He is one of the best and I hope his voice will be heard more and more widely.'
(Adrian Mitchell)

TUESDAY MARCH 10th 1761

'The Market Place was a tragic sight. Bodies of the dead and wounded lay scattered. The ground was stained with blood and the cries of the wounded were pitiful. The following day it rained, washing away the traces.'


Wash away the day,
wash the pain away,
sweep the remains of yesterday
into the racing river.
Beat the Dead March,
bang the old drum,
heal Hexham's bust bones
and cry me a River,
cry the Water of Tyne.
Wash away the day,
wash this pain away.

© Keith Armstrong, 1996

(previously published in 'Innocent Blood, the Hexham riot of 1761', Uitgeverij Northern Voices, Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear NE25 9HF UK; ISBN: 1-871536-12-X)

'SPRING': PIT PONY

You are an underground Spring;
No flowers grow here,
No sunshine glows.
You are an underground Spring.

You're a dark horse in a dark place;
Your back's bruised with coal;
Yet you have dreams
You too have dreams:

Spring into the fields,
Spring across the grass.
Spring with the children,
Hear them sing!

'Spring' the pony,
Spring the trap;
Trapper-lad
Spring the trap.

© Keith Armstrong, 1995
Previously published on the cd 'Bleeding Sketches' van The Whisky Priests, Whippet Records, 1995.