Wherever you are and whatever you believe, Christmas has become a kind of universal festival for sharing with friends, giving gifts and remembering those who aren't quite so fortunate.
In the Middle East, our Muslim neighbours celebrated with us (and we celebrated Eidd with them), and this year we're invited to share the day with Israeli friends in Italy (it's Hannukkah at the moment). There are also Scandinavian and Dutch communities in Pietrasanta and they celebrate different things on different days and, back home in northern England, the Solstice festival will be in full swing because the 21st is the day when the sun begins its long journey back towards summer.
So it was very important to me to find a piece of poetry both gloriously festive and also inclusive. Much rummaging about in books and Google! Then, suddenly, it became clear. One of my great childhood memories is listening to Dylan Thomas's 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'. As an adult I loved reading it to my own children, and I thought that it would be nice to share it with you all. Poetry as story-telling, language as music, rooted in the old Welsh oral tradition.
Editor: Kathleen Jones
If the video doesn't work, please follow this link.
Whatever your beliefs, and whatever you're doing this week, we in the Tuesday Poem community wish you peace, health, wealth, creativity and happiness - oh! and the very best of luck - for the coming year.
Thank you to our regular readers and supporters and those who just stop by.
For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the sidebar.
Edited this week by UK author and poet Kathleen Jones who also lives in Italy. You can find her Tuesday Poem at www.kathleenjonesauthor.blogspot.com and one of her poems is featured on Helen Lowe's blog this week.
In the Middle East, our Muslim neighbours celebrated with us (and we celebrated Eidd with them), and this year we're invited to share the day with Israeli friends in Italy (it's Hannukkah at the moment). There are also Scandinavian and Dutch communities in Pietrasanta and they celebrate different things on different days and, back home in northern England, the Solstice festival will be in full swing because the 21st is the day when the sun begins its long journey back towards summer.
So it was very important to me to find a piece of poetry both gloriously festive and also inclusive. Much rummaging about in books and Google! Then, suddenly, it became clear. One of my great childhood memories is listening to Dylan Thomas's 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'. As an adult I loved reading it to my own children, and I thought that it would be nice to share it with you all. Poetry as story-telling, language as music, rooted in the old Welsh oral tradition.
Editor: Kathleen Jones
If the video doesn't work, please follow this link.
Whatever your beliefs, and whatever you're doing this week, we in the Tuesday Poem community wish you peace, health, wealth, creativity and happiness - oh! and the very best of luck - for the coming year.
Thank you to our regular readers and supporters and those who just stop by.
For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the sidebar.
Edited this week by UK author and poet Kathleen Jones who also lives in Italy. You can find her Tuesday Poem at www.kathleenjonesauthor.blogspot.com and one of her poems is featured on Helen Lowe's blog this week.
5 comments:
Fabulous choice, Kathleen! I have always loved the lines 'Years ago when there were wolves in Wales and birds the colour of red flannel petticoats' - such nostalgia. Merry Christmas!
He shoves his hand into that snow ... 'And out come Mrs Prothero and the firemen' .. the stuff of all writing. And here it comes in the most wonderful riffs and rhythms and stresses - and for me it's always in the deeper voice, more rolling (more Welsh!) voice, of my non-Welsh father who read it to us too, Kathleen, and recorded it one year and gave the CD to us to keep.
I always loved the little voice of the boy piping up: ''I mean that The bells that the children could hear were inside them. "I only hear thunder sometimes never bells.''' And one line I always remember Dad delivering with great smacking of lips: 'the bat-black snow-white belfreys...' (If I got that right!). Happy Xmas everyone.
Glad you like it too - that veritable river of language that carries you along!
Fabulous to hear it read in the poet's voice! Thank you for posting, Kathleen--and to all Tuesday poet folk, poets and readers both, a very merry holiday season and a wish for 'all good things' in 2012 (despite the news!)
beautiful word.....!!!
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