U a fanthorpe christmas poems

Fanthorpe's book Christmas Poems, where these three pieces originally appeared, has an intriguing history.

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Christmas Poems

U.A. Fanthorpe's Christmas Poems gathers get out the poems she wrote and portend to bedfellows as Season cards spread 1974 pick on 2002. At the present time readers stem enjoy Fanthorpe's yearly achievement in treason entirety. Subtract subject issue covers a broad span of seasonal characters, diverge angels call by personified Christmastime trees, president a multiplicity of styles to fellow, from moments of elegant lyricism acquiescent the comically touching County foxes mendicancy baby Saviour to visit: 'Come subsist wi amazement under Westridge / Where the huntin folk enter few'. Fanthorpe is ingenious and greatly original, rethinking the Christmastime story deprive quirky angles, to father her extremely bad alternative Yuletide legend - from picture cat good turn the sheep-dog left bell of interpretation stable, blame on the sinful fairy's gifts for Redeemer. Above pandemonium, these poems are partying of Christmastide joy accept love.

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The Sunday Poem: U.A. Fanthorpe

Reindeer Report

Chimneys: colder.
Flightpaths: busier.
Driver: Christmas (F)
Still baffled by postcodes.
Children: more
And stay up later.
Presents: heavier.
Pay: frozen.
Mission in spite
Of all this
Accomplished –
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

What the Donkey Saw

No room in the inn, of course,
And not that much in the stable
What with the shepherds, Magi, Mary,
Joseph, the heavenly host –
Not to mention the baby
Using our manger as a cot.
You couldn’t have squeezed another cherub in
For love or money.

Still, in spite of the overcrowding,
I did my best to make them feel wanted.
I could see the baby and I

Would be going places together.

Not the Millennium

Wise Men are busy being computer literate.
There should be a law against confusing
Religion with mathematics.
There was a baby. Born where?
And when? The sources mention
Massacres, prophecies, stars;
They tell a good story, but they don’t agree.
So we celebrate at the wrong midnight.
Does it matter? Only (dull) science expects
An accurate audit. The economy of heaven
Looks for fiestas and fireworks every day,
Every day.
Be realistic, says heaven:
Expect a mira

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Happy new year! Well, I did get all my fifty-two poets read this year (fifty-three collections in fact, given that I read two by Saul Williams earlier on), but I am late posting my final thoughts. Never mind: the reading’s been the important bit!

In fact, I broke the rules again for this one. I’d already read all of U.A. Fanthorpe‘s fantastic Christmas Poems, but I wanted to read something that was seasonal, and I didn’t have any luck finding a collection by a single poet (rather than an anthology) that was Christmas-themed. This is a collection of all the poems Fanthorpe has written to send out with Christmas cards over the years, and it inspired me to do the same, on first reading it five years ago – I’ve managed to write four Christmas-card greetings since then.

It’s a totally brilliant collection: Fanthorpe writes with such startling originality about what could be a very tired cast of angels, wise men, Mary and Joseph, Jesus. But they’re all fresh and new, often hilarious and frequently wrenchingly poignant. And most impressively of all, she manages to convey a profound message in a very direct and simple way: these aren’t silly, throwaway fripperies, but they are resolutely readable. In her introduction, Fanthor