The Twelve Poems of Christmas

Selected and introduced by Carol Ann Duffy

The Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, has teamed up with us to bring out The Twelve Poems of Christmas which she has selected and introduced. Her choices - see below - are characteristically powerful and profound (and fun). As she points out in the Introduction, “poets – by their very calling, great celebrators – have always written Christmas poetry, regardless of faith or its absence”.

The Twelve Poems of Christmas “…is the best, most poetic solution there could possibly be to card-and-present buying at Christmas” in her view and we couldn’t agree more. As with all our pamphlets, it comes with a matching bookmark (with plenty of space on which to scrawl a Christmas message) and an envelope.

We hope that you will read the poems in quiet moments or share them around with the mince pies.

Merry Christmas!

“I think, that is, of others who
Withdrew from commerce and the world
To work for joy instead of gain.
O would that I could gather them
This Yuletide, and shower them with coins.”

from ‘Christmas Song’ by Norman Williams

ISBN 978 0 9558944 8 0

To order this pamphlet from overseas please contact mo@centralbooks.com .

Contents

U.A. Fanthorpe, 'Christmas in Envelopes’
Clinton Scollard, ‘A Bell’
Langston Hughes, ‘Carol of the Brown King’
Leigh Hunt, ‘Christmas’
Billy Collins, ‘Christmas Sparrow’
E.E. Cummings, untitled (‘little tree’)
Walter de la Mare, ‘Mistletoe’
Pauline Stainer, ‘Carol’
Norman Williams, ‘Christmas Song’
Anne Stevenson, ‘Carol of the Birds’
Denise Levertov, ‘In California During the Gulf War’
Carol Ann Duffy, ‘December’