Night Train, Queen's Hall, Hexham
By Stan Beckenstall, The Journal
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Published by Newcastle-based Flambard Press, it combines the considerable talents of locally-based poet Sean O’Brien and artist Birtley Aris who conjure up a romantic world of steam trains and railway landscapes glimpsed by night.
The collection of poems was launched on Friday at Queen’s Hall Arts Centre in Hexham, where O’Brien proved to the audience that he reads aloud as clearly and evocatively as he writes.
While there is no verbal narrative, words and Aris’s pen drawings capture landscape, buildings, lines and atmosphere.
This is not a case of an artist illustrating poetry but rather of two men fascinated by railways working together to recreate the excitement of steam power, the sadness of its passing and the unique landscapes it created.
Rosebay willowherb, renowned for its phoenix-like capacity to rise out of ashes on a derelict site is the fireweed that sets the scene orally and visually, taking the strain of the passing of the age of steam.
The drawings that provide the strong narrative – with cameos of railways, hotels, tunnels, viaducts, decayed notices, steam, reflected light, abandoned stations, carriages and crossings – are displayed in the foyer, supported by two colour art works.
O’Brien, a professor of creative writing at Newcastle University, has won national accolades for his work.
Aris’s artwork was given one of the best retrospectives that I have ever seen, at Durham recently.
It is work like this that deserves a place in our northern galleries.
By Stan Beckensall, an Honorary Doctor of Letters of the University of Newcastle and author and archaeologist
The Night Train exhibition is running in the Queen’s Hall foyer until September 1.
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