Fancy Listening to Poets Reading their Work?

I have just come across this wonderful website. It's an online collection of recordings of poets reading their work - and it's free of charge.With contemporary and historical recordings, as well as a children's archive and resources for students, it's well worth a look.

Poetry Archive

Christmas Poetry - Is it all just Tinsel and Christmas Trees?

A little bit late, but my excuse is that I love Christmas and have really wrapped myself up in it over the last two weeks. I have been thinking about all the different ways that poetry can express this special time of year; and it’s far from being a myriad of poems about tinsel and Christmas trees!

I came across a review of Carol Ann Duffy’s (the UK’s Poet Laureate) latest book-length children’s poem ‘The Christmas Truce’ (www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/truc-d27.shtml)

Duffy’s poem highlights the events leading up to an unofficial ceasefire between British and German troops during Christmas WW1, and illustrates the horror of the conditions in the frozen, flooded trenches. She uses beautiful imagery to imbue her harsh, desperate setting with Christmas magic:

Silver frost on barbed wire, strange tinsel

But Duffy is doing so much more with this poem:

But it was Christmas Eve; believe; 
belief thrilled the night air,

As Christmas dawns, the British and German troops sing as one voice, they show each other pictures of their loved ones and they exchange gifts of biscuits and tea. Duffy has used the harsh reality of the trenches to create a poignant beauty – a hope for all mankind. We can really believe, if just for this fleeting moment, that there is hope for us. 

Her poem also shows us that there is more to Christmas poetry than tinsel and Christmas trees. For many, it is an emotional and significant time of year. There are families who are thinking of their loved ones in the Middle East this year, and my thoughts go out to them.

This is a truly beautiful poem, and well worth a read.  She has sprinkled it with the magic of Christmas. It's a war torn landscape, covered with a clean, new blanket of snow.

Read the full poem here http://www.my-best-books.co.uk/the-christmas-truce-2/