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Tongue and Talk: the Dialect Poets – Northumberland
BBC Radio 4
Sunday 27th May 16.30, repeated Saturday 2nd June 23.30
Available after first broadcast on i-player HERE
In the final episode of this three-part series, children’s author Kirsty Mckay investigates dialect poetry in Northumberland today. Kirsty’s programme focuses on the poetry of the Cheviot hills, where she meets poet and musician James Tait, the children of Harbottle School, and poet Allan Wood. Allan is a retired shepherd, and – together with shepherd and singer Graham Dick – I was lucky enough to travel with him to the Cowboy Poetry Festival in Elko Nevada in 1999, to investigate the origins of Western American folk traditions in those of Northumberland and the Scottish Borders. In her programme, Kirsty revisits Allan, who worked with her father on a remarkable series of films made by the Coquetdale community in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s.
Kirsty also visits the Northumbrian coast to talk to me for her programme. Although I am not a Northumbrian native or a dialect speaker, I spent a great deal of time with dialect speakers of the Northumbrian coastal fishing community throughout the 1990s, and have written poetry which reflects that. I’ve never pretended to speak Northumbrian like a native, but I do find great expressive richness and vitality in the language. I really enjoyed our thought-provoking conversation, and very much look forward to hearing Kirsty’s programme. I’ll post some further thoughts on writing in the dialect on this blog in the next few days.
In the meantime, for those who are interested in the subject, here are some links.
Allan Wood’s voice and poetic scripts can be found in a remarkable series of 16mm films made by the Coquetdale community led by Dr Keith McKay, now available on DVD in the ‘Bygone Coquetdale’ series, HERE.
James Tait’s poetry and music is available HERE.
In the programme, Kirsty also talks to Kim Bibby Wilson, leading light of the Northumbrian Language Society. The NLS exists to promote, research, preserve and enjoy the Northumbrian Language through meetings, competitions and publications. For some years, I’ve enjoyed the great honour of being its President. You can find out more about it HERE.
Every year, the NLS celebrates the birthday of Northumberland’s most famous dialect poet, Fred Reed. Fred’s collected works can be found in ‘The Northumborman’ (Iron Press, 1999), available HERE.
My own long dialect poem The Wund an’ the Wetter, written for the launch of ‘The Northumborman’, is published in ‘Two Countries’ (Bloodaxe Books 2014), available both as print and as e-book with audio HERE.
The original publication with CD (with music by Northumbrian piper Chris Ormston) is available HERE.
You can hear me read an excerpt, with Chris on pipes, HERE.
My first collection, ‘The Lost Music’, which includes poems about Northumberland fishermen, many of which are at least partly in dialect, is available HERE.
You can hear me read some poems containing dialect from each collection, including Charlie Douglas, Plenty Lang a Winter, and excerpts from The Wund an’ the Wetter and Five Sea Songs at the Poetry Archive, HERE.
My full 30-page word-list of Northumbrian fisher dialect, collected over two decades, was used by Bill Griffiths as a major source for his last book, Fishing and Folk (Northumbria University Press, 2008), and is included in it as an appendix. Bill’s book is available HERE.
I’ll add some thoughts on writing poetry in Northumbrian dialect to this blog before the end of this month. Please listen to Kirsty’s programme — and please do watch this space!
The Cheviot Hills, Northumberland
Words on Walls
Here’s a tour of some sites where lines from my poems appear as visual collaborations or in public artworks around Northumberland and Durham…
Fragments
Exhibition at Berwick Museum, Berwick Barracks, Berwick upon Tweed, TD15 1DG, until September 30th
This exhibition brings together work by potter Graham Taylor, photographer Jose Snook and volunteers from the HLF funded Peregrini Lindisfarne Landscape Partnership project, which involved a wide variety of conservation and engagement projects across Holy Island and the adjoining mainland.
Lines from my poem ‘The Refuge Box’ appear on three of Graham’s ceramic vessels. In addition, a series of new poems called ‘Many Hands’, which I wrote to accompany Jose’s portraits, also form part of the exhibition. These draw on volunteers’ responses to the landscape, as well as my own.
Alnwick
Barter Books, The Old Station, Wagon Way Rd, Alnwick NE66 2NP
Barter Books is open every day 9am-7pm and its Station Buffet serves delicious food and great coffee. I’m honoured that my poem, ‘If My Train Will Come’ (from ‘The Lost Music’, Bloodaxe Books) appears on the wall in the second room, above the ‘Fine Arts’ section:
I look forward to taking part in a live event with Gloucestershire poet Patrick Mackie in the bookshop in May. Here are the details:
England’s Motley
Place: Barter Books, Wagon Way Rd, Alnwick, NE66 2NP
Date and Time: Friday, May 18th, 7.30pm
Entrance: £5 (Please book in advance in the shop or Telephone 01665 604888.)
An exciting evening of poetry from Patrick Mackie and Katrina Porteous. While their two voices are very different, they share a common fascination with local, English, and global identities, and the desire to carry the legacy of Edward Thomas into new fields…
Amble
Northumberland Seafood Centre, Amble Harbour Village, Leazes St, Amble, NE65 0AL
This is a great place, where you can buy all kinds of seafood sourced directly from local fishermen. It’s a real honour that my poem ‘Cathy’ (from ‘Two Countries’ Bloodaxe Books) appears on the wall. It’s about a fisherman’s wife and mother, and the importance of women to the traditional fishing industry:
Amble Town Square also includes some circular pavement plaques with lines from my poem ‘The Sea Inside’ (From ‘The Lost Music’).
Hadrian’s Wall, near Bardon Mill
The new YHA lounge and dining room area at The Sill (Hadrian’s Wall Landscape Discovery Centre) includes excerpts from several poets, including my poem ‘This Far and No Further’ (from ‘Two Countries’):
The next two sites are NOT open to the public, but I’ll include them anyway…
Newcastle upon Tyne
Dept of Mathematics, Ellison Building, Northumbria University
Poems from Imagining the Sun 2016 appear as wall posters, alongside artwork by Helen Schell.
Sunderland
Castletown Primary School
Catrin Jones’ stained glass panels from 1996 included lines from my poems ‘The Sea Inside’ and ‘Wrecked Creeves’ (both from ‘The Lost Music’). The panels, which beautifully depicted sea scenes, were acid-etched on coloured glass. The children commented: ‘We liked the colours and the way it was done, especially the patterns on the glass that really look like the sea. We also liked the verses, but found them a bit hard to understand…’
Seaham, Co Durham
Michael Johnson’s award-winning ‘Timeline’ pavement plaques, and two of his bronze and stainless steel sculptures, including the large outline of St Mary’s Church in the Seaham Hall Beach car park, contain lines from my poems for ‘Turning the Tide’, in ‘Two Countries’.
Easington Colliery, Co Durham
Easington Colliery Memorial Garden at the bottom of Seaside Lane (where it turns south), opened on 29th May 2001 in memory of those who worked and served at Easington Colliery from 1899 to 1993. The date was 50 years to the day of the pit explosion in 1951 that killed 81 men and boy miners from the village and two of those involved in the rescue. Queen Elizabeth II visited the garden in the year of her Golden Jubilee on 8th May 2002. I was commissioned by Easington Colliery Parish Council to write the pavement inscription:
Out of the dark
Came heat and light.
How far, how deep
Are the workings that made us?
As deep as remembering.
As far as tomorrow.
Free Thinking for Schools
School Radio-Poetry Workshops for the Poetry Society at the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival, Sage Gateshead, 6-8 March 2018
This week I was fortunate to be invited by The Poetry Society to run a series of hour-long school workshops in partnership with a BBC Radio 3 production team as part of the 2018 Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. The idea was that the students should write poetry on the Festival theme of ‘The One and the Many’, as content for a short programme which each group would go on to present and produce as part of their half-day radio experience.
I’ve previously taken part in the Free Thinking Festival as a panellist on discussion shows, as a radio reviewer, and as a poet and performer (in ‘The Verb’, 2010, and in ‘Horse’ for ‘Between the Ears’, 2011). I also have many years’ experience of writing poetry for radio. How does a ‘radio poem’ differ from one you might find in a book? And how is any poem different from a news report? These were questions I hoped to explore with the students.
Over two days I worked with Thorp Academy, Ryton (32 KS 7 students), Farringdon Community Academy, Sunderland (15 KS 8-9) and Nunnykirk Centre for Dyslexia, Northumberland (9 KS 8-9).
The Festival theme was ‘The One and the Many’, so I planned my workshop around the idea of the Sun: our one ‘special’ star among many, and a star which has many ‘faces’ in one. The session was adapted from a successful template which I’ve recently devised with scientists at Northumbria University’s NUSTEM for the project ‘Imagining the Sun’.
In my adapted version I introduced the idea of our Sun as our ‘special’ star, and asked the students to tell me what they knew about it and how they perceived it from Earth (reminding them that we must never look at the Sun directly!). I showed them a series of real photographs of the Sun’s surface and corona, taken in different wavelengths or temperatures, revealing that the Sun has many ‘secrets’ that we cannot ‘see’ with our normal senses. We watched a video of a solar flare, and discussed the science. Then we read my poem ‘Observatory’ about the interrogation of the Sun’s many faces. We looked closely at how language works in that poem.
Most importantly, we spent 20-30 minutes of each session on writing. I asked the students to contrast their own experience of the Sun from Earth with different ‘faces’ of the Sun which they had seen in the video. What might these different ‘moods’ or ‘faces’ say to each other? What questions would they, the students, ask the Sun? Each group was small enough for me to be able to support each student individually to develop their ideas and language, with particular emphasis on sounds and action words – verbs – for their radio broadcast.
Writing radio poems about the Sun, with students
The students’ poems were fantastic. Here are a few lines from one, KS 7:
‘It’s hiding, but in plain sight:
When you see it, it is like being shown
Your greatest nightmare and your best dream.’
‘I seem quiet, but my soul is the same as yours.
Look at me: my fire bridges,
The fountains beyond your imagination…’
Over the second hour, the students worked in teams to present and produce a five-minute radio ‘news-and-chat-show’ in the special Radio 3 glass pop-up studio. They worked from a script, which – in theory, at least – allowed time for them to read a line or two from some of their poems. This did not happen as much as I’d have liked, due to the time constraints of the format. But the students still came up with great programmes, some discussed a poetry slam event, and some were able to record their poems in the studio afterwards.
This was a highly successful and enjoyable project. All the students seemed to have a wonderful time, all produced excellent, thoughtful and lively poems, and all worked together well in their radio studio teams. Even if their poetry didn’t always make it into their radio programme, everyone worked hard, and every student had an enjoyable and rewarding educational experience, which I’m sure they will remember for the rest of their lives.
Students record their poems in the BBC Radio 3 pop-up studio, Sage Gateshead.
It’s fantastic that Radio 3 is able to offer young people this kind of opportunity to write and produce their own broadcast. Radio is such a great medium for poetry. It’s also important, not just for the students, but for a national broadcaster to build such links with places and communities. I really hope that this kind of work can continue in the future.
With thanks to all the schools, the Poetry Society and BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking.
Spring!
Diversifly Podcast
Listen HERE to a new 40-minute podcast recorded last summer. It’s based on a conversation with the wonderful Nadia Kingsley of Fair Acre Press, in which we discuss the writing process, my interests – including the Northumbrian fishing village where I live – and my collaborative projects. In the course of this I read seven poems, old and new.
The podcast is part of a series with poets who write about nature and place, including David Morley, Alison Brackenbury — and others to follow soon. It’s produced by, with original music composed and played by, Giancarlo Facchinetti.
Diversifly is part of Fair Acre Press’ Urban Birds project, which you can read about HERE.
As another part of that project, there’s also a fantastic new illustrated book, Diversifly, edited by Nadia Kingsley, containing poetry and art on Britain’s urban birds, available HERE.
Poetry of Place at Dartington International Summer School and Festival
4-11 August
I’m thrilled to be leading a week-long writing course as part of the 70th Dartington Summer School this year, in a glorious setting, alongside some of the world’s most celebrated musicians, writers and thinkers. Among the many (mostly music) courses that week are several on folk music. My course will loosely relate to those. We’ll connect to the physicality of landscape through sound, and explore the voices – natural and human – which lead us towards ‘a sense of place’.
Sunday 5th August, 5.15 – 6pm: I’ll be performing poetry in the Great Hall, Dartington with the amazing folk fiddler Alexis Bennett.
Imagining the Sun at the Lit and Phil
On January 17th Year 9 and 10 students from Cramlington Learning Village took part in a half-day workshop at Newcastle’s Lit and Phil, led by research scientists from Northumbria University’s solar physics research group, NUSTEM – and me.
The workshop, with the unusual aim of combining solar physics and poetry, was part of the legacy of Imagining the Sun.
The project challenged public and schools audiences to explore how approaches from art and science can complement and inform each other.
The students’ poems are fantastic. I was so impressed by them, I asked Kay Easson, Head Librarian at the Lit and Phil, if we might put them on display, and she has kindly allowed us to do this. They are now on display in the library until mid-March. If you’re passing the Lit and Phil, 23 Westgate Road, Newcastle, please do drop in to see them.
A free booklet about Imagining the Sun featuring solar science, some of my poems and fabulous artwork from the project by Helen Schell, is available from the Information Desk.
Word Sharing on World Book Night
23rd April, Lakeside Room, Van Mildert College, Durham University, from 7pm
Van Mildert College will be hosting an evening poetry event to celebrate World Book Night, featuring English and German poets from the Durham – Tuebingen cultural exchange programme. More details to follow. The event will include readings from the recent Word Sharing anthology, by its English editor Dr Keith Armstrong, and contributing poets such as Paul Summers, Katrina Porteous and others, including students from Durham University.
Burns Night Special
Poetry and Music on Newcastle Quayside
Tuesday 23rd January 2018, 7.30-9.30pm
The Red House, 32 Sandhill, Quayside, Newcastle, NE1 3JF
Admission Free
Performers in this atmospheric venue include Northumbrian piper Chris Ormston, performing a special set with poet Keith Armstrong featuring 18th century-inspired Tyneside poems and tunes. Others performing their own work include poets Katrina Porteous, Catherine Graham, Harry Gallagher and Rob Walton, and special guests from Teeside, Robert Lonsdale and Trev Teasdel. Music from The Sawdust Jacks (featuring their new song on Newcastle writer Jack Common), and Durham’s Gary Miller (whose ambitious performance, recording and book project, The Mad Martins, featuring Keith’s poems, has just been launched).
There will be a special feature, commemorating local writers and artists Jack Common (1903-1968), Thomas Bewick (1753-1828), John Cunningham (1729-1773) and Joseph Skipsey (1832-1903).
Bring your friends and family!
More information from Dr Keith Armstrong, Northern Voices Community Projects:
Tel 0191 252 9531
Darkness and Light
Thank you for finding your way to this blog. I wish you a very Happy New Year, and look forward with you to 2018. For me this includes a couple of fantastic new collaborations (more on these in months to come), and exciting developments for Horse, my poetry and music piece with electronic composer Peter Zinovieff, first written for Radio 3’s Between the Ears in 2011. We are now working towards a new production, with projected performance dates in 2019. The limited edition book and CD of the piece, with prints by Fantastic Beasts illustrator Olivia Lomenech Gill, is still available if you click here – it’s now a collector’s item. For news of the project’s development, please keep following this blog.
On the subject of collaborations, you can listen if you click here to composer John Casken’s brilliant setting of two of my fishing poems, Uncertain Sea, sung by the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, conducted by Ben Parry. You need to sign up to the site to hear it, but it’s free.
In January, I look forward to a school-group workshop on Imagining the Sun with solar scientists from NUSTEM at Newcastle’s Lit and Phil. It’s free, and schools can click here to sign up.
I’m also excited to see heritage potter Graham Taylor’s fabulous new exhibition in Berwick Museum, featuring ceramic vessels from the Peregrini Lindisfarne Landscape Partnership project, Fragments. The theme is the natural and cultural landscape on and around Holy Island, the forms are loosely based on historical vessels, and the content of the decoration has been influenced by workshops with community groups. Several of Graham’s vessels include text from my long radio poem, The Refuge Box. The full text of this poem can be found in my most recent Bloodaxe collection, Two Countries, for which please click here.
Below are two of Graham’s own images of his Fragments vessels.
For more about Graham Taylor and his work, please click here.
From Holy Island to Devon: later in 2018, I look forward to leading a course on the Poetry of Place at the 70th Dartington International Summer School and Festival. You can sign up here.
Meanwhile, in the deep winter darkness, click here for a glance back to the first Durham Lumiere Festival in 2009, which I reviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, together with a specially commissioned poem, Durham Cathedral.
If you’ve has enough of dark nights, click here for a look forward to the Summer Solstice, with a short reading from Dunstanburgh from BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour on June 21st 2017.
Lastly, the excellent Grey Hen Press has just launched Songs for the Unsung, a new collection of poems for the unremarked and overlooked, the alienated, marginalised and disadvantaged, edited by Joy Howard. It includes work by many great women writers, including Meg Peacocke, Gillian Allnut, Mimi Khalvati and Sheenagh Pugh – and a couple of my own poems. You can buy it by clicking here. It costs £10 + postage, and a donation of 50p for the sale of each book goes to Age International.
Thank you again for finding my blog, please continue to follow it and, once again, I wish you a very happy 2018!
