info NeoGnostic

An Innocent Abroad!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Thu, 13 Oct 2022 08:26:00 +0000

If you read about me on the back cover of The Dark Trilogy, you will discover that once - for some ten years or so - I sailed the seas:

Sailor and librarian, navigator and researcher, teacher and trainer, and—always—a traveller: Chris Armstrong has had three careers, working as a merchant seaman...

Book II of the Trilogy explores my first faltering years at sea: young, innocent, at sea in more ways than one, working on a ship where it seemed that everyone knew so much more than I! I once wrote a poem about joining my first ship:

Innocence

The London mist wets the docks and the decks
of my first ship on the day that I join;
I am alone at the rail: there are barges, a tug

of loneliness in my chest. This sea,
the sea in the docks, is dirty brown
rainbow oily, scummed with ship droppings,

a lone plank of timber floating like a lost
surfboard - I think of the sun on Gower waves.
I left home young and immediately

uncompanioned by strangers, was lost
to all they knew, drowning in the isolation
of my new-learned bewilderment

wondering if I shall ever know the pleasure
of girls' bodies as their talk suggest they do.
Loaded, this ship is as empty as my soul

Book II of The Trilogy - a play for voices - begins:

Imagine:

This is how it begins...

It is early Spring, it is afternoon: dismal dock drizzle hazes everything beneath each yellow damp lampglow and dulls the docker din and the winch whine as cargo is loaded. A smell that is a mixture of the salt sea, old oil, steam, old and filthy dock water, smoke from the barge tugs, sweat and stale beer is held down against the ground by the wet mist...

They have travelled by train, by underground and finally by taxi to get here: his mother and his father guiding him for the last time - guiding him through a geography he does not yet know. All of his life, they have guided him, directed him, helped him, pushed him, and now their time is at an end. Neither the boy nor they have recognised this change...

Meet the Author!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 11:15:00 +0000

The Lampeter Public Library has offered members of the Ceredgion Art & Craft Trail space in the library to show their work during the World Cup football tournament (November 18th onwards). The Library is keen to show the creative talent in the area as a way to celebrate the appearance of the Welsh team in the World Cup.

It is hoped to begin the exhibition with a gathering of some sort where members of the public will be able to meet the exhibitors. I shall be there and will be happy to talk about my new book and my poetry.

Come and meet me!

** I will post more information as it becomes available **

The Dark Trilogy: Agon

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 12:56:00 +0000

So, a beginning. The agon, that conflict of my personae, that conflict of my characters. Today the wind has been blowing from the west and the rain, which has kept me from the little garden surrounding my cottage for the past week, continues on and off: then it was sunny...

As I drove slowly along the country roads towards home, through the leafy shades, between the high hedges and patches of sunlight, past hamlets and villages, my mind ran back to the many times I had passed this way before. Times almost half a century ago when ...

Introducing Trystan Lewis, poet

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Fri, 16 Sep 2022 09:34:00 +0000

In The Dark Trilogy, Trystan Lewis the poet, my fictional alter ego, has his work and his life examined through the critical lens of his scholarly friend and editor. Trystan's scholarly childhood friend knows him so well! So well that in explaining the poem at the heart of the story he puts Trystan's life and his writing under a microscope! As only he could! There is so much to tell in this partly fictional autobiography that makes up the first book of the Trilogy.

And in analysing the poem and setting it amongst other poems by the poet - many of which, including some unpublished works, are quoted in the book - the scholar also finds a hidden story, one that the poet did not realise he had told. So the book holds two life stories displaced by several hundred years, histories which interweave and come together in the Welsh mountains in the present day.

It all started with a poem...

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Wed, 14 Sep 2022 09:54:00 +0000

Retrospective was published in Mostly Welsh in 2019. It begins:

Innocent

he met a force

Untried

it held him

... and wonder drained the world of substance

re-arranged the pages of his book to give more radiant

a reading.

It is about a life: the poet's life, my life... and as The Dark Trilogy would have it, my lives.

Publication day is September 30th!

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 12:11:00 +0000

... but I have author copies! And it is available for pre-order from the publisher and on Amazon.

A book that follows one man's life might be an autobiography, but what is a book that traces the lives of two men?

The fictional autobiography which makes up the longest book of the Trilogy holds the two histories of one man displaced by several hundred years, histories which interweave and come together in the Welsh mountains in the present day. And a part of one of those lives is traced further in the play for voices which makes up the second volume. Book three brings our characters to a resolution of kinds.

Chris Armstrong has blended fact and fiction to create a complex story with many strands... a story of the sea, a story of passionate love, a story about a poet, a story about his friend and editor, and a story about the past: a past that the writer only understands completely at the very end of his anabasis - his journey away from the sea.

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 08:53:00 +0000

Coming soon to a bookshop near you!

Watch this space

Tides

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 13:52:00 +0000

time flows

like currents in the ocean

and crystallises in my mind

old tears taste

like the sands of an empty beach

my memory is their salt

A Poetry Reading in Aberystwyth

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 15:30:00 +0000

At the end of last month the bookshop in the Arts Centre staged a poetry reading/book launch for a poet who had connections with Aberystwyth going back to his student days in the 1970s. Chatting to him before the reading, I discovered that he had not only lived in Bronant but in one of the other cottages that were then on the farm where I live... and that we had a friend in common! If truth were told, we must have met each other back in the seventies too - but neither of us recognised the other! And here we were - both poets! Must be something in the soil!

Dominic Fisher was reading from The Ladies and Gentlemen of the Dead - a slim volume thoroughly worthwhile acquiring! A couple of the poems he read during the evening can be found on his blog at https://dominicfisherpoetry.com/2020/01/28/return-from-aberystwyth/but these are just a beginning - perhaps the most touching was one written to be read to a friend dying from cancer - 'Pictures of us that I haven't got'. But many others deserve a read... not just a read, but several reads. I particularly liked (apart from the two Aberystwyth poems - 'Llangurig' and 'Ynyslas' - in the blog) 'From Nowhere'.

We are here on an apple on a tree in deep space

or on some other kind of fruit or planet

in the middle of what we call October.

And the poem for which the book is named.

Sometimes these skeletons are down on their kneecaps

praying for wings

to a bone moon...

The poems are heartfelt and honest, and many are very moving. Go out and buy the book and enjoy the read!

Sea Song

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 15:43:00 +0000

we scattered the ground with our desire

the past soon buried in the warm sands of the day

laughing, you held me

breathless I plunged into the depths

blindly tasting your love as you raised me in the surge

we were quiet in the undertow

Winter Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 14:43:00 +0000

Tan-y-Bwlch, Aberystwyth

Remember

The sea assaults

Of winter gales when

Towering spray sheets curl

Over the green-stripe tower

At the harbour mouth

And waves roll shoreward

Beside its jetty

Shingle crashing

Floating spume across the beach

With black stones cold shone by spray

That above the wave thrust

Hides the horizon behind its mist

As the sun shines low

On a December afternoon

Berlin Irony

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 09:52:00 +0000

9th November 2019

1961

A wall of shame

cut through a city and a people

a bleak new division:

we and the world turned away

1989

A wall fell

remade a city, a people, a history

a bright new union:

we and the world rejoiced

2019

Now we fashion

our uniquely British wall

a tragedy of repeated history:

the world wonders, shrugs

2047

And I wonder if

my children must wait

twenty-eight years before

the world rejoices again

Or shall we spend our time

building more walls?

New Publication

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 10:43:00 +0000

I have recently been at a couple of poetry readings - at Gwyl Lyfrau Aberaeron Book Festival and, the next day, at an evening reception at Broc-Mor in Aberystwyth – both well attended and enjoyable! When I was preparing and deciding what to read I realised that I had - over the years - written ten poems around Brexit and I read one of them in Aberystwyth, but it occurred to me that it might be worthwhile... or at least fun... to bring them together in one publication!

And so Braiding Brexit: a Lemming's-eye View was born!

The pamphlet is available to view or download at:
https://i-booklet.co.uk/ChrisArmstrong/BrexitPoems/

Augury

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 10:58:00 +0000

Waking to see autumn's lustre

lit on my beech

rust leaves gilt glowing

red gold bathed by

a rising sun's first grasp

of day.

Turning to see gold amber cirrus

low light the east -

beneath a darker grey purple

cloud bruise

that golden gleam of

dawning dawn.

So my sad grey purple dreams

dawn dim

their dark ghosts disconnect to

fade to latent light

my day newborn sun sings

and I am risen.

Dark Lullaby

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Thu, 10 Oct 2019 15:24:00 +0000

As this first night knows me

as my soul becomes its dream

I understand my small being

is one with time's vast scream.

Even now I know between

my heart's first aspen flutter

and its last soft ashen beat

endless dark passions must clutter

my every empty lonely night

and bear down to hold my mind;

only this one moment knows a calm:

a velvet dark - a fusty smell - find

the mantling wing,

my mother's ancient shawl

warm wool winged

holds my drowsy head in thrawl

driving night's dark dæmons

from the soft innocence

from my dawn-drawn bed

The Sterling Castle, 1703

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Tue, 08 Oct 2019 10:55:00 +0000

The sands move

brushed by moray tale

shivered in clouds

by a sole's shy shift

the currents stir

shaking silt

to mist the sea

to settle -

moving time

over an old log reel,

clearing the centuries

discovering old timbers:

dead ribs

reaching up to past waves

offering their history

to the naked shipworms.

As the crabs scuttle to explore

as stars creep in the dark

sands of the anchorage

below the tall stern post and rudder

the tide shifted shoals

have left a long cannon

still on its carriage

fallen from the gun ports

where two of its sisters

still stand proud guard

with a lone conger eel.

Listen!

As the men shivered

in the Great Storm,

manning the clanking pumps

cutting away fallen spars

soaked by crashing waves

breaking over the bows,

blasting through the hawsehole -

desperately scared by a fate

foretold by howling winds

numbed by a future

felt in every ship shaking shock

of the dragging anchor -

they could only wonder

at the longshoremen

who watched but left them

at the Admiral's ship

which left them

to the sands of

the Goodwins

Sunday

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Sun, 15 Sep 2019 06:08:00 +0000

The pomegranates
are ripe on the tree
across the road
and the swallows
are skimming beneath the power lines
and the soft blue sky
The washing on the balcony rail is dry
The village dogs bark
Church bells summon summer in
and the early morning peace
is broken as a tractor heads for the fields
The sun heats the soft grey
feathers on the pigeon’s back
and he leaves his chimney perch
above the deep green
pomegranate tree

[Flogita - 15 September 2019]

Bird Watching

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 09:29:00 +0000

We didn't see him at first

the eye without reference

horizon

does not always see what it sees

the flat expanses of low tide sand stretch wide

between the two streams

of the Loughor

around

the two

streams

the wetlands

are mudflat marsh grass green

distracted by the move of

stream bound sand bound gulls

the eye misses

the lone egret

in his little creek

in the sand

island

Images of the End of Summer

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 16:03:00 +0000

The sun gleam left by a slug on a poppy leaf

Below a prison of a million tiny seeds

The fragile pale petal of one last bloom

Falling as the bumble bee lands

The honey-scented buddleia nectar is a siren call

And butterflies spangle its purple blooms

Their fading wing colours still gilding

The browning history of past meals

Now the pondweed surface lacks water lily colour

Hovering dragonflies are anchored above

The insects still skate across the surface film

The eyes of the dragonfly see it all

To walk past a bank of sunwarm marjoram

Is to send a thousand insect up from lunch

To buzz for a moment and settle back

Wasps make the angriest noise

In the greenhouse tomatoes reach the roof

Pushing between the fig's bustling might

Smothering dahlia struggling for light

On a rack onions are not drying

Mnemosyne

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 15:12:00 +0000

There is always one sacred moment

when the night's ink black sky

allows some personal atonement

to my dull and once-blind eye:

a single white star's icy reign,

absent in the deepest dark,

until the second that my brain

is riven by its diamond spark.

That this sheer shining crystal blazed

while hidden from my careful scan

can only leave me dumb, amazed

that the mind has this way to ban

the outside world from its internal scene -

the star was always there to see

yet not for my poor mind to glean

until gifted with some unknown key.

Thus the brain plays with memory's deeps

and hides what we most wish to know

until that one star of recollection leaps

lumined clear in the mind's reluctant flow.

But I have drunk from the Mnemosyne

and can never forget the love we shared:

that memory now holds my soul unseen

between this world and death's dark laird.

Sin

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 15:00:00 +0000

"There is no sin except stupidity." Oscar Wilde -The Critic as Artist.

Mea culpa! Mea culpa!

Nostra maxima culpa!

Thus should we weep, we cry

As it all ends with a whimper, a sigh

It is the people's will, they say

Proroguing to get their glory day

Your vote was for an ideal state

For nation, borders, Keep Britain Great

Now, your vote means a total schism

As we see no agreement mechanism

Six hundred pages that define

The ways our nation will decline

No trade agreements with the old Market

A dearth of imports - how will we mark it?

No doctors, no drugs, a future stark

As borders become one huge lorry park

Will industry decline without its freight?

Manufacture with no markets just abate?

We can only say we voted thus

Seeing promises writ large on a campaign bus

A lame excuse - did we not think for ourselves at all -

Remember the United States of Europe and OUR call

To make a family based on freedom and on peace:

Those great ideals that we shall just let cease

What have we done? What is our fate -

Begging outside the Union's gate?

Of course we won't - we will stand tall

As all men do before their fall

But after, as in poverty and in debts

We struggle with huge national threats

Will we cry, This was not what we thought?

Let us back in! Without you we are nought!

An Evening

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 14:45:00 +0000

There was peace

in the sound of the beach waves.

The seaweed damp sand

smelt sharply of sea brine.

By the rock

her hand touched me gently.

I wound my fingers in her long hair

and heard her say 'Forever.'

In that night

there was only love in her voice.

The bright star over the dark sea

knew the passion of our hearts.

From the sea

came a sad echo in the night.

The tide at our feet sang:

'How long is forever? How long?'

The Poem

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 14:43:00 +0000

As in the summer library sun

she reads, and reads again by choice

The poem he had said was of love, hard won

She reads the lines and hears his voice

Hears him speak to her, to her alone

As the poem's words seep through her brain

She hears them whispered in a lover's tone

And feels them run free in each and every vein

Coursing through - as her mind delivers

A frisson to her skin: blushing shivers.

She scrapes back her chair an inch

and embarrassed, glances around

Striding around the sunlit lecture hall

Speaking on his favourite poet with some pride

He had delivered poetic wisdom to them all

But watched as she held her hair aside

Penned a note, paused, added more

Sonorously he carried on but now aware

One student hangs on his every word as law

Briefly he wondered would he ever dare...

And changing tack - declaimed the sonnet

In a melodic tone with too much promise on it.

He said, 'Know the poet's mind for your seminar'

and embarrassed, left without a backward glance

Vespers

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Wed, 18 Apr 2018 14:42:00 +0000

As I pass beyond my summer wall

Once more the land embraces my spirit

And its silence becomes my prayer

While I and heaven hear

The wind whispered psalm

As dusk caresses the treetops

That surround my field fane -

I walk slowly through its grassy nave

Lost in my old memories

And pause at the far gate:

The sun sinks low behind me

And my long shadow stretches out in penance

At the Grave

noreply@blogger.com (Chris Armstrong) — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 14:59:00 +0000

As the rains came we followed

As the rains fell we listened

And walked towards the minister,

Passing by the dark grave wherein she lies,

To drop another daffodil, a final kiss from life,

On the pale box below.

And on, to cluster round beneath the trees

Circling the family, rooted by some strange harmony

Of communion: a drifting mass lost in loss.

On the hillside, as the first sods drop down,

They are united through twenty parting years

And peace comes to me in the silence

As the land heals its open wound.