As part of our current art exhibition ‘Shipyard Faces and Intriguing Spaces’, a celebration of the work of Peter Burns, David Young will be taking a further opportunity to look back at shipbuilding on the Tyne through the poetry of Jack Davitt – whose pen name was ‘Ripyard Cuddling’ – and the films of the Amber Film & Photography collection.
Although Jack Davitt was to spend the whole of his working life in the shipyards he could equally have ended up down the pit.
“Apprenticed to the welding trade
I struggled hard to make the grade
The squarest peg, the roundest hole –
The choice was this or digging coal.”
He was born in 1924 in the colliery village of Old Benton Square, as far away from poetry as you could get. Nevertheless, Jack picked up a pen at school and began to craft words. He never stopped. Even while serving in the Royal Navy as a telegraphist during the second world war, he wrote.
As a welder in Swan Hunter’s Wallsend yard, he circulated his poetry among his fellow workers under the pen name ‘Ripyard Cuddling’. His shipyard poetry draws its inspiration from over forty years of life in the yards. They describe the conditions and characters he encountered in an industry since lost to time. Jack’s poems are full of shrewd observations of life in the yards and are by turn both funny and poignant.
Jack retired from the yards in 1985 and died in 2014.
The two short films we will feature are from the Amber Film & Photography Collective. ’Launch’ made in 1973 documents the construction and launch of the super tanker World Unicorn at the Swan Hunter Wallsend yard. This will be followed by a screening of ’The Art of Shipbuilding’ a 2017 photo film bringing together shipyard poetry, painting, photography and film to reflect on the community, memory and artistry of Tyneside shipbuilding.
There will also be a chance to see ‘Mining Poems or Odes’ based around the work of poet Robert Fullerton a former welder in the Govan shipyard.
The event will be held on the top floor of the heritage centre surrounded by the wonderful paintings and drawings of Jack’s friend Peter Burns.