Clare Pollard’s poem will be displayed on banners around the Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square until January 6, 2010. The banners feature artwork by Marcus Walters.
I’m a New Yorker who grew up on the magnificent Christmas tree lightings in Rockerfeller Square in Midtown Manhattan. In my childhood this was still a relatively modest community event. In those days, it was attended mostly by New Yorkers. In more recent years, it has become a loud commercial affair attended by tourists and visitors.
It may be in part the memory of those long-ago and magical tree-lightings that drew my attention to this lovely relatively understated English-Norweign collaboration. The inclusion of poetry makes it all the more engaging: for the eleventh year running, The Poetry Society commissioned a poem to wrap around the Norwegian Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square.
For 2019 poet Clare Pollard wrote The Gift inspired by the theme of hope. It will adorn the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree through January 6th. The Gift was inspired by the images and ideas of London primary school children who received free poetry workshops from Cheryl Moskowitz, Coral Rumble, and Clare Pollard. The workshops were organised by The Poetry Society in October and November. The poem was read by a small group of primary school children at the lighting ceremony last Thursday.
This ceremony is organised by the Mayor of Westminster and Royal Norwegian Embassy, attended by the public, the Mayors of London’s thirty-two boroughs, and VIP guests including the Mayor of Oslo. The Poetry Society and the Royal Norwegian Embassy encircled the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree in poetry, celebrating the City of Oslo’s annual gift to London, as part of The Poetry Society’s Look North More Often project. The Poetry Society’s Christmas tree poem project, Look North More Often, was launched in 2009 as part of its centenary celebrations, encouraging local schoolchildren to write in celebration of the tree’s arrival from Norway.
The tradition of the Mayor of Oslo sending a Christmas tree to London as a symbol of peace and friendship dates back to 1947, in recognition from Norway of Britain’s support during World War II. The tree’s journey starts with the Lord Mayor of Westminster visiting Oslo for a traditional tree-felling ceremony followed by the Mayor’s return with the tree to London.
In addition bringing professional poets into London primary schools to work with the students on their ideas and words for the Christmas tree poem, Look North More Often provides teachers across the UK with new digital resources to assist them in teaching poetry.
Here is an except from the commissioned poem, which was read on Thursday.
The Gift
by Clare Pollard (with thoughts and images dreamt up by primary schoolchildren from Westminster)
The seed becomes a golden flower of pouring light, a gift.
I need you to believe, Hope says. It’s you makes me exist.
I feel bright feathers lifting.
I hear a tiger’s roar.
I’ve taken many forms, Hope says – changing is what I’m for.
CLARE POLLARD (Clare’s Official Site) (b. 1978) is a poet and playwright who was raised in Bolton and educated at Turton School in Bromley Cross. She studied English at Cambridge University. At age 19 Pollard published her first poetry collection, The Heavy-Petting Zoo (Bloodaxe Books Ltd. (1997)) In 2000, Pollard won a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award. In 2004, her play The Weather was performed at the Royal Court Theatre. In 2007, My Male Muse, a radio documentary was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. In 2009, Pollard and James Byrne edited the Bloodaxe young poets showcase titled Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century.[5] Pollard has been a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow at Essex University. In 2013, she was the judge for the inaugural international Hippocrates Prize for Young Poets.
Clare Pollard has published four collections of poetry, the most recent which, Changeling (Bloodaxe, 2011) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her play The Weather premiered at the Royal Court Theatre and her documentary for radio, She co-edited the anthology Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century and her new version of Ovid’s Heroides was published by Bloodaxe in May 2013
Clare’s Amazon Page U.K. is HERE and U.S. is HERE.
Note: The content of this post is courtesy of The Poetry Society, Wikipedia, Clare Pollard, and Amazon.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
Angel of the Divine Presence Bringing Eve to Adam, William Blake (The Creation of Eve and She shall be Called Woman), Ca.1803 Courtesy of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art / public domain
“The soul of sweet delight, can never be defiled.” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake
William Blake painted lots of men with burly thighs
He painted endings & impasses, full of weepings, warrings and sighs,
Showed us discontent and turbulence much, often, and more.
Because, as he knew of himself, ‘for double the vision my Eyes do see
And a double vision is always with me.’ As one does, he gets stuck in that place of mourning, like we do.
But he came forth back. To beginnings. Painting his “The Nativity,”
his baby Jesus spun flew out of birth through the air, arms stretched open wide,
Here in this balanced bringing Eve here, the birth-hood of woman.
No angry stretched fight-ready faces, no muscled thighs on the ready.
What a field of eyes, an effusion of gentle, this place of peaceful,
so fresh it looks transparent. Nothing weighed this down.
No rib mangling or second best. This is just fresh air.
Adam in some boyish expectation and Eve coming down curly,
Her heart and body sweet singing naked.
Down down down is up up up, it seems, a way forward to.
Birds beaked colors that faded gentle blue.
And Blake knew of misogyny and androgyny
But he let himself paint here a new equality story:
“Love and harmony combine,
And around our souls entwine.”
And he turns open nakedness into a blessing
Natural and sacred. Sweet sweet sweet.
more green woods Blake “going forth to faire free”
“When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.” William Blake
I am delighted to let you know that Linda Chown’s Narrative Authority and Homeostasis in the Novels of Doris Lessing and Carmen Martín Gaite(Routledge Library Editions: Modern Fiction) is now available through Amazon in hardcover and Kindle. Linda tells me a budget-wise paperback edition will be available in six-to-eight months.
This study, originally published in 1990, assesses a shift in the presentation of self-consciousness in two pairs of novels by Doris Lessing and Carmen Martín Gaite: 1) Lessing’s The Summer Before the Dark(1973) and Martín Gaite’s Retahílas (1974) and 2) Lessing’s The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) and Martín Gaite’s The Back Room (1978). Three major structural divisions facilitate examining implications of the novels for 1) feminism 2) literary narrative and 3) the lives of people-at-large. / J.D.
LINDA E. CHOWN grew up in Berkeley, Ca. in the days of action. Civil Rights arrests at Sheraton Palace and Auto Row. BA UC Berkeley Intellectual History; MA Creative Writing SFSU; PHd Comparative Literature University of Washington. Four books of poetry. Many poems published on line at Numero Cinq, Empty Mirror, The Bezine, Dura, Poet Head and others. Many articles on Oliver Sachs, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and many others. Twenty years in Spain with friends who lived through the worst of Franco. I was in Spain (Granada, Conil and Cádiz) during Franco’s rule, there the day of his death when people took to the streets in celebration. Interviewed nine major Spanish Women Novelists, including Ana María Matute and Carmen Laforet and Carmen Martín Gaite.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
“I have been seeing such increasing evidence of abuse recently that I felt it was time to do something. I am not a silent poet looks for poems about abuse in any of its forms, colour, gender, disability, the dismantlement of the care services, the privatisation of the NHS, the rape culture are just the examples that come to mind at the moment. It is not a site for rants which, if they are well written are welcome here [i.e. Facebook]. My idea for this group is for discussion about abuse and what we can do about it. There is room here, of course for poetry. I just felt it was time for me to get off my arse and try to do something.” Reuben Woolley, publisher of the webzine I Am Not A Silent Poet, A magazine for poetry and artwork protesting against abuse in any of its forms
Reuben Woolley died last week and so many of us are feeling the loss of this man who shared our ideals, wrote poems of protest and resistance, and published “quality poems of protest” on his webzine site as well as poetry and information on his Facebook discussion page. His most recent book. This Hall of Tortures, was published in April 2019. He recently sent me a copy for review. I was waiting until he got out of the hospital to send my interview questions.
“I am not a silent poet looks for poems about abuse in any of its forms: colour, gender, disability, the dismantlement of the care services, the privatisation of health services, the rape culture, FGM, our girls in Nigeria are just some of the examples that come to mind at the moment. It is not a site for rants.”
Reuben was laid to rest on Monday and his daughter writes, “Although he was not a religious man, we decided to do brief ceremony at the Iglesia de los Milagros in Ágreda. In the same place where he and my mother got married 40 years ago, we came today to cry his death and celebrate his life.
“Remembering all our roadtrips around the UK listening to the Rolling Stones’ album “Let it Bleed” , I thought that playing for him “You can’t always get what you want” one last time would be a good way to remember him. Personally, I think he would have got a huge kick out of knowing that he caused a Rolling Stones’ song to be played in this quaint Spanish cemetery. Cheers dad.”
requiescat in extremis
the dark denizens
come forward
in flux
& what i have is
the hole in the picture the
red balloon & a child
follow me this
again
& one time only
here
there is weather a
hindrance & my chair i
sit too much listening
to pure crazy jazz
in this brain my
dangerous habitat
extinguish me now say
a pointless gesture ever & down
load this my stupid requiem
In the spirit of I am not a silent poet and in honor of Reuben, please share a protest poem or two – any topic but NO RANTS, per Reuben’s rules. Comments on and memories of Reuben are welcome also if you’d like and will be published along with your poem/s next Tuesday.
please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link
please submit poems only, no photos, illustrations, essays, stories, or other prose
PLEASE NOTE:
Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published.
IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.
PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.
Deadline: Monday, December 9 by 8 pm Pacific Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.
Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro. It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you.
You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
I am delighted to let you know that Linda Chown’s 
Reuben Woolley died last week and so many of us are feeling the loss of this man who shared our ideals, wrote poems of protest and resistance, and published “quality poems of protest” on his webzine site as well as poetry and information on 
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 