JINGLE ON MY SON!

JINGLE ON MY SON!
A doughty champion of his local culture.(Poet Tom Hubbard)Your performance at the city hall was soooooooooo good! Christoph thought it was excellent! (Carolyn)

30.4.14

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



                                                                                                 

27.4.14

BACK TO LIMERICK!

I'll be reading at On the Nail, the Locke Bar, Limerick with Noel Duffy on Tuesday September 2nd 2014.

23.4.14

OLD NEWCASTLE
































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


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 tenant, merchant Patrick Black

18.4.14

10.4.14

TUEBINGEN IN SPRING!


Hi Keith,

Keep going the good and important work!



Mit herzlichen Grüßen aus Tübingen
Otto Buchegger



























photos: Peter Dixon

1.4.14

THE ARMSTRONG ARCHIVE!


Durham University Library Special Collections Catalogue



http://archiveshub.ac.uk/data/gb33-arm
http://reed.dur.ac.uk/xtf/view?docId=ead/lit/armstrgk.xml


Vastly impressive - a tribute to your industry and tenacity!



(Rodney Pybus)

BLAUER SALON, TUEBINGEN




the jingling geordie

My photo
whitley bay, tyne and wear, United Kingdom
poet and raconteur