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So grab your cuppa, and join in.
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13 poets born in December –
some write of winter’s cold,
some what’s endured or
chosen, and some of
yesterdays, todays,
or tomorrows
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December 22
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1869 – Edwin Arlington Robinson born in what is now Alna, Maine. Prolific American poet and playwright; in 1922, he won the first Pulitzer Prize for Poetry awarded. He self-published his first two books, largely unnoticed until 1904, when Kermit Roosevelt gave Robinson’s second book, The Children of the Night, to his father, President Theodore Roosevelt. The President not only persuaded Charles Scribner’s Sons to republish the book, but also reviewed it himself for the Outlook, and arranged a sinecure for the poet at the New York Customs House —a post Robinson held until 1909. The two thousand dollar annual stipend gave him financial stability. It was the only sinecure political reformer Teddy Roosevelt ever granted. In 1910, Robinson dedicated his collection of poems, The Town Down the River, to Roosevelt. Robinson is now mostly remembered for his poem “Richard Corey,” but he published 28 volumes of poetry. His first Pulitzer Prize was followed by two others (1925 and 1928), and helped make him one of the few American poets to earn his living entirely from poetry. At age 55, Robinson fell ill with cancer, and spent his final hours in a hospital bed correcting galley proofs of his last poem, King Jasper, before slipping into a terminal coma in April, 1935. The national press mourned the passing of “America’s foremost poet” in editorials and obituaries.
Karma
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
.
Christmas was in the air and all was well
With him, but for a few confusing flaws
In divers of God's images. Because
A friend of his would neither buy nor sell,
Was he to answer for the axe that fell?
He pondered; and the reason for it was,
Partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus
Upon the corner, with his beard and bell.
.
Acknowledging an improvident surprise,
He magnified a fancy that he wished
The friend whom he had wrecked were here again.
Not sure of that, he found a compromise;
And from the fulness of his heart he fished
A dime for Jesus who had died for men.
.
“Karma” from Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson – Kessinger Publishing, 2007 edition
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1935 – Tomás Rivera born in Crystal City, Texas, to Spanish-speaking migrant farm workers, and as a boy he worked in the fields. An American author, poet and academic, he is best known for his novella y no se lo tragó la tierra (and the earth did not swallow him), which won the inaugural Premio Qunito Sol award in 1971. After he earned a degree in English from Southwest Texas State University, he taught English and Spanish at secondary schools (1957-1965) before returning to school for his PhD in Romance Languages and Literature at the University of Oklahoma in 1969. He went on to teach at the University of Texas at El Paso, then became Chancellor of the University of California, Riverside (1979-1984), and served on public service committees, including the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He died suddenly of a heart attack at age 48 in May 1984. His poetry collections include: Always and Other Poems; The Searchers: Collected Poetry; and Tomás Rivera: The Complete Works.
The Rooster Crows en Iowa y en Texas
by Tomás Rivera
.
The rooster crows.
The alarm rings.
They eat and go to work.
.
"Aladín y su lámpara maravillosa"
.
The snow falls.
The truck runs full of people.
And we return . . . home.
.
"Once upon a time there were three little pigs"
.
To spend money.
And to walk in the holes
full of street
of my town.
.
The street calls and
extends itself
to the house of the door
and the fence of the gate
and . . .
.
I look . . .
It looks at me . . .
yawns and shakes its dust.
.
And I yawn and sleep
until the rooster crows.
.
“The Rooster Crows en Iowa y en Texas” from The Searchers: Collected Poetry, © 1990 by Concepción Rivera; edited by Julian Olivares – Arte Publico Press, English-Spanish edition
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1986 – Kae Tempest, formerly Kate Tempest, born in Westminster, London, and grew up in Brockley SE London, UK; English non-binary hip-hop poet, musician, and playwright. At age 16, Tempest was accepted into the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, then won the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for their work Brand New Ancients. Tempest came out as non-binary in 2020, using pronouns they/them. Their poetry collections include: Let Them Eat Chaos; Pictures on a Screen; Running Upon The Wires; and Divisible By Itself and One.
The Point
by Kae Tempest
.
The days, the days they break to fade.
What fills them I’ll forget.
Every touch and smell and taste.
This sun, about to set
.
can never last. It breaks my heart.
Each joy feels like a threat:
Although there’s beauty everywhere,
its shadow is regret.
.
Still, something in the coming dusk
whispers not to fret.
Don’t matter that we’ll lose today.
It’s not tomorrow yet.
.
”The Point” from Hold Your Own, © 2014 by Kae Tempest – Picador
Poetry
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December 23
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1926 – Robert Bly born in Lacqui Parle County, Minnesota; American poet, essayist, translator, and leader ofthe mythopoetic men’s movement. Author of the 1990 best-selling andcontroversial book IronJohn: A Book About Men. His poetry collection The Light Around the Body wonthe 1968 National Book Award for Poetry. He was awarded the Robert Frost Medalin 2013 for lifetime achievement. He died at age 94 in November 2021.
The Cat in the Kitchen
by Robert Bly
.
Have you heard about the boy who walked by
The black water? I won't say much more.
Let's wait a few years. It wanted to be entered.
Sometimes a man walks by a pond, and a hand
Reaches out and pulls him in.
.
There was no
Intention, exactly. The pond was lonely, or needed
Calcium, bones would do. What happened then?
. It was a little like the night wind, which is soft,
And moves slowly, sighing like an old woman
In her kitchen late at night, moving pans
About, lighting a fire, making some food for the cat.
.
“The Cat in the Kitchen” from Robert Bly: Collected Poems, © 2018 by Robert Bly – W.W. Norton& Company
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1955 – Carol Ann Duffy born in Glasgow, Scotland; Scottish poet, playwright, and academic – the first woman, first Scot, and first openly LGBTQ+ person appointed as Britain’s Poet Laureate (2009-2019). Her 1985 poetry collection, Standing Female Nude, won the first of her three Scottish Arts Council Book Awards, Selling Manhattan (1987) won the Somerset Maugham Award, Mean Time (1993) won the Whitbread Poetry Prize, and Rapture (2005) won the T.S. Eliot Prize. She also won the 1995 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. In Duffy’s The World’s Wife, she gives us a collection of modern versions of the old tales, with an unsettling feminist twist.
The Bee Carol
by Carol Ann Duffy
.
Silently on Christmas Eve,
the turn of midnight’s key;
all the garden locked in ice –
a silver frieze –
except the winter cluster of the bees.
.
Flightless now and shivering,
around their Queen they cling;
every bee a gift of heat;
she will not freeze
within the winter cluster of the bees.
.
Bring me for my Christmas gift
a single golden jar;
let me taste the sweetness there,
but honey leave
to feed the winter cluster of the bees.
.
Come with me on Christmas Eve
to see the silent hive –
trembling stars cloistered above –
and then believe,
bless the winter cluster of the bees.
.
“The Bee Carol” from Collected Poems, © 2015 by Carol Ann Duffy – Picador/Pan Macmillan
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December 24
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1943 – Timoshenko Aslanides born in Sydney to an immigrant father from the Pontic Greek community in Kerasus on the Black Sea and a mother from New South Wales; prolific Australian poet who was the first Australian to win the British Commonwealth Poetry Prize (for best Commonwealth first poetry book in English) in 1978 for The Greek Connection. He went on to publish 15 more poetry collections, including Australian Things, which shared second prize for book-length collections in the 1988 Bicentennial Literary Awards. He earned degrees in several fields: music, psychology, economics, and studied Modern Greek for a year at the University of Athens. From 1967 to 1985, he worked in the Australian Postmaster General Department, and then the Department of Trade, before resigning to become a full-time professional Australian poet. His poetry collections include: Troubadour: Poetry and original music for violin; Temperament; A calendar of flowers; Stop Words; and One Hundred Riddles. Aslanides died at age 76 of cancer in January 2020.
Eternity (in marriage)
by Timoshenko Aslanides
.
Whether or not a priest or celebrant's involved,
the couple that truly weds still marries itself;
everyone else is there for fashion, the forms-of-words,
consumption of cake and far too much champagne.
So when he and she were married in The Pilbara,
they sat themselves in the best they had near water.
She threw a stone. 'Until it floats, I'm true to you.'
He showed her the wedding ring he'd made himself.
'I'll love you till Port Hedland tides no longer race
across the harbour flats to stranded ships;
till Mulga, Paper-Bark and River Red Gum lose
their Pallid Cuckoos, Doves and Diamond Finches;
until those winds that daily roar across The Bight
cease their search for windmills in Esperance.'
'Those things described', she said, 'conceivably could happen.'
He looked her in the eye and touched her cheek.
'I'll love you till it rains in Marble Bar', he said.
She smiled and kissed him, this time as his wife.
.
“Eternity (in marriage)” from Collected Poems, © 2018 by Timoshenko Aslanides – Hybrid Publishers
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1950 – Dana Gioia born in Los Angeles, California; American poet, writer, and literary critic; his MBA is from Stanford Business School and he was a vice president at General Foods, where he marketed Kool-Aid, so Gioia is not your usual poet. He ended his corporate career at age 42 to concentrate on writing, then later became a professor at the University of Southern California. From 2003 to 2009, he combined his diverse skills to become chair of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), where his initiatives were legion. He raised funds to launch ‘Shakespeare in American Communities’ to send over 75 professional theatre companies touring the country. ‘Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation Contest’ involves nearly half a million high school students in a national contest that awards $50,000 in scholarships. ‘The Big Read’ was the largest literary program in federal government history: over 400 communities held month-long celebrations of great literature. ‘Operation Homecoming’ put distinguished American authors in charge of writing workshops for returning troops and their spouses to help them express their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and on the homefront. Business Week magazine called Gioia “The Man Who Saved the NEA.” His poetry collections include The Gods of Winter; Daily Horoscope; 99 Poems; and Pity the Beautiful.
Rough Country
by Dana Gioia
.
Give me a landscape made of obstacles,
of steep hills and jutting glacial rock,
where the low-running streams are quick to flood
the grassy fields and bottomlands.
A place
no engineers can master–where the roads
must twist like tendrils up the mountainside
on narrow cliffs where boulders block the way.
Where tall black trunks of lightning-scalded pine
push through the tangled woods to make a roost
for hawks and swarming crows.
And sharp inclines
where twisting through the thorn-thick underbrush,
scratched and exhausted, one turns suddenly
to find an unexpected waterfall,
not half a mile from the nearest road,
a spot so hard to reach that no one comes–
a hiding place, a shrine for dragonflies
and nesting jays, a sign that there is still
one piece of property that won’t be owned.
.
“Rough Country” from 99 Poems: New & Selected, © 2016 by Dana Gioia – Graywolf Press
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December 25
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1771 – Dorothy Wordsworth born in Cockermouth, Cumberland, England; English author, poet, and diarist; sister of William Wordsworth; noted for her Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, published in 1874, and Grasmere Journal, published posthumously, taken from her diaries about her life in the Lake District, where she lived with her brother, UK Poet Laureate William Wordsworth, and his family. She died at age 83 in January 1855.
The Cottager to Her Infant
by Dorothy Wordsworth
.
The days are cold, the nights are long,
The North wind sings a doleful song;
Then hush again upon my breast;
All merry things are now at rest,
Save thee, my pretty love!
The kitten sleeps upon the hearth,
The crickets long have ceased their mirth;
There’s nothing stirring in the house
Save one wee, hungry, nibbling mouse,
Then why so busy thou?
Nay! start not at the sparkling light;
‘Tis but the moon that shines so bright
On the window-pane
Bedropped with rain:
Then, little darling! sleep again,
And wake when it is day.
.
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December 26
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1894 – Jean Toomer born as Nathan Pinchback Toomer, in Washington DC; African American poet, playwright, novelist, and essayist, associated with the Harlem Renaissance. He was the grandson of Pinckney Pinchback, the first Black governor in the United States, who was governor of Louisiana for 36 days during Reconstruction. As a child, Toomer went to both all-white and all-black segregated schools. He would resist being classified by race, and just called himself an American. He began writing his best-known work, Cane, a novel that incorporated poems and vignettes, while serving briefly as a school principle at a black agricultural and industrial college in Sparta, Georgia. There were lynchings while he was in Georgia, and he soon left to go to New York. He was a student of George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic and spiritualist, but later became a Quaker. He stopped writing for publication in 1950, but The Wayward and the Seeking, a volume of poetry and short stories written in his last years, was published posthumously. Toomer died at age 72 in 1967.
November Cotton Flower
by Jean Toomer
.
Boll-weevil's coming, and the winter's cold,
Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old,
And cotton, scarce as any southern snow,
Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow,
Failed in its function as the autumn rake;
Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take
All water from the streams; dead birds were found
In wells a hundred feet below the ground--
Such was the season when the flower bloomed.
Old folks were startled, and it soon assumed
Significance. Superstition saw
Something it had never seen before:
Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear,
Beauty so sudden for that time of year.
.
"November Cotton Flower" from Cane, 1923/1951 by Jean Toomer – Liveright Publishing
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1947 – Liz Lochhead born in Craigneuk, Lanarkshire, Scotland; Scottish poet, playwright, short story writer, translator, and broadcaster; she served as Poet Laureate for Glasgow (2005-2011) before becoming The Makar (National Poet of Scotland 2011-2016). She studied at the Glasgow School of Art (1965-1970), then taught art at secondary school in Glasgow and Bristol, but considered herself a poor teacher. Her first book of poetry, Memo For Spring, was published in 1972. She also worked with writers Tom Leonard and Alasdair Gray on revue shows, including Tickly Mince and The Pie of Damocles. She is as well-known for her plays and adaptations of classic works like Moliére’s Tartuffe and Euripides Medea as she is for her poetry collections. Lochhead is a vocal supporter of Scottish independence and a feminist (“feminism is like the hoovering [vacuuming to Americans], you just have to keep doing it.”). She was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2015. Her poetry collections include: A Choosing; Bagpipe Muzak; Dreaming Frankenstein; The Colour of Black & White; and A Handsel.
In the Mid-Midwinter
by Liz Lochhead
.
after John Donne’s ‘A Nocturnal on St Lucy’s Day’
.
At midday on the year’s midnight
into my mind came
I saw the new moon late yestreen
wi the auld moon in her airms
though, no,
there is no moon of course –
there’s nothing very much of anything to speak of
in the sky except a gey dreich greyness
rain-laden over Glasgow and today
there is the very least of even this for us to get
but
the light comes back
the light always comes back
and this begins tomorrow with
however many minutes more of sun and serotonin.
.
Meanwhile
there will be the winter moon for us to love the longest,
fat in the frosty sky among the sharpest stars,
and lines of old songs we can’t remember
why we know
or when first we heard them
will aye come back
once in a blue moon to us
unbidden
.
and bless us with their long-travelled light.
.
“In the Mid-Midwinter” from Fugitive Colours, © 2016 by Liz Lochhead
– Polygon Publishing
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December 27
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1936 – Sandra Gilbert born as Sandra Ellen Mortola in New York City; American literary critic, poet, author of psychoanalytic criticism and feminist theory; best known as co-author with Susan Gubar of The Madwoman in the Attic. She earned a BA from Cornell University, and married Elliot Gilbert in 1957, then earned her PhD in English literature from Columbia in 1968. In 1974, she and Susan Gubar began co-teaching a course on English-language women writers taught at several universities, which led to their collaboration on their influential book The Madwoman in the Attic. Gilbert taught at several universities, including Johns Hopkins and Stanford, before being appointed to the C. Barnwell Straut Chair of English at Princeton (1985-1989). She and three other professors resigned from Princeton in 1989 over the leniency shown to Thomas McFarland after he was accused of sexual misconduct. Her poetry collections include: In the Fourth World; The Summer Kitchen; Kissing the Bread; Belongings; and Aftermath. She died at age 87 from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in November 2024.
After Thanksgiving
by Sandra Gilbert
.
Lord, as Rilke says, the year bears down toward winter, past
the purification of the trees, the darkened brook.
Only 4:45, and the sky’s sheer black
clasps two clear planets and a skinny moon
As we drive quietly home from the airport,
the last kid gone.
.
The time of preparation’s over, the time of
harvesting the seed, the husk, the kernel, saving
what can be saved—weaves of sun like
rags of old flannel, provident peach stones,
pies, pickles, berry wines to
hold the sweetness for a few more months.
.
Now the mountains will settle into their old
cold habits, now the white
birch bones will rise
like all those thoughts we’ve tried to repress:
madness of the solstice, phosphorescent
logic that rules the fifteen hour night!
.
Our children, gorged, encouraged, have taken off
in tiny shuddering planes. Plump with stuffing,
we too hurry away, holding hands, holding on.
Soon it’ll be January, soon snow will
shuffle down, cold feathers, swathing us in
inches of white silence—
.
and the ways of the ice
will be narrow, delicate.
.
“After Thanksgiving” © 1987 by Sandra M. Gilbert, appeared in the January 1987 issue of Poetry magazine
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December 28
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1933 – Panna Naik born in Bombay, British India; Indian Gujarati language poet, story writer, and essayist. At college in India, she studied Gujarati and Sanskrit. In 1960, as a bride, she came to the Philadelphia. She earned a Master’s in Library Science, and a Master of Science degree in South Asian Studies. Naik worked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Van Pelt Library as a bibliographer and librarian (1964-2003) and was also a professor of Gujarati (1985- 2002). Her poetry collections in English are Philadelphia, Cherry Blossom, and The Astrologer’s Sparrow.
Lioness
by Panna Naik
.
“You may stroke my neck with fingers now.
I will not roar!
I have become a tamed animal.
.
No need to worry I may be dangerous.
See, the pet licks
Your hand, your cheek, your nose
And she rolls over at your feet.
Don’t you feel the touch of her soft hair?
.
My needs are few: a little milk and meat;
A small corner in your mansion.
You are a lion and I am
A lioness.
.
You can lift and throw me in the air.
I won’t tear you with my claws.
Here, put your hand on my neck and mouth;
Cup my soft muzzle.
.
See, I am a tamed lioness.
.
But you don’t want me as a pet.
I know, you want to let me loose
Somewhere in the Acacia forest.
I also know why. It’s because
I refuse to meet your demand.
You want a lioness that never roars.
Oh, naiveté!
No such creature exists.
You seek mythology.
.
“Lioness” from The Astrologer’s Sparrow: Poems, © 2018 by Panna Naik – New Academia Publishing/Scarith Books
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1934 – Alasdair Gray born in Glasgow, the son of a father who was wounded in WWI, and a mother whose family moved to Scotland after her father was blacklisted in England for being a trade unionist. Gray was a Scottish screenwriter, poet, short story writer, illustrator, painter, and novelist. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art (1952-1957). After leaving school, he painted theatrical scenery, and later painted murals, and worked for a museum. He also wrote plays for broadcast on radio and television. Gray was writer-in-residence at the University of Glasgow (1977-1979), and taught creative writer at Strathclyde University (2001-2003). His first novel, Lanark, published in 1981, is his best-known work, and considered a landmark in Scottish fiction. He was a socialist and supporter of Scottish independence, and his epigram “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation” is engraved in the Canongate Wall of the Scottish Parliament Building. Gray died at age 85 in December 2019. His poetry collections include: Old Negatives; Fleck, a play in verse; and Collected Verses.
Winter Housekeeping, 1990
by Alasdair Gray
.
In weather like this the homeless can hardly live
and every year sees more of them, none of them me.
I give to beggars of course, though charity
prolongs their pain. So do market forces.
Strong brains who tackle problems of this kind
need the protection of a cosy house
or several. I manage with only two
and love these freezing slushy Glasgow streets
at home in bed here, holding and held by you.
“Be up. Be out. Be off,” I to me say
so softly there is no need to obey.
Warm smoothness is a quality of you,
enjoying which undoes all need to do.
Warm smoothness is a quality of we
who lie enjoying it, content to be.
.
“Winter Housekeeping” from Sixteen Occasional Poems 1990-2000, © 2000 by Alasdair Gray – Morag McAlpine
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G’Morning/Afternoon/Evening MOTlies!
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