This time in December

Today it's Carol Ann Duffy's birthday and so any excuse for some Duffy. This piece comes from her 'Another Night before Christmas'.

Then she watched as the room filled with magic and light
As the spirit of Christmas made everything bright
And suddenly presents were heaped by the tree -
But she didn't wonder, which ones are for me?

For the best gift of all is to truly believe
In the wonderful night that we call Christmas Eve,
When adults remember, of all childhood's laws,
This time in December will bring Santa Claus.
presents

How will you be spending today?

I drop the dying year behind me....

Guess what? I found a Carol Ann Duffy poem for New Year's Eve.

New Year

I drop the dying year behind me like a shawl

and let it fall. The urgent fireworks fling themselves

against the night, flowers of desire, love's fervency.

Carol Ann Duffy

champagne

Wishing you all a Very Happy New Year

2011

Book Gifting

A small post about the books given and received this Christmas.

Gifted
For Warmth Carol Ann Duffy Another night before Christmas

and her 12 Selected Poems, Tim Burton The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy, Wisden Cricketers Almanack 1986 and 1999
For Twin Mrs Dalloway's Party Virginia Woolf
For Brother in law The Flavour Thesauraus
For Pops John Le Carre Our Kind of Traitor
For a dear friend Hatfields Herbal
For Godchild Ted Hughes The Iron Man
For another Godchild ABC in Animals


Received
From Warmth Carol Ann Duffy Mrs Scrooge and 12 her Selected poems, a beautiful diary, A World History of Art (having mentioned once that in hindsight sometimes I think I'dd quite like to have read History of Art at university.)
From Parents Vogue covers

From a dear friend Sarah Broom Tigers at Awhitu.
Persephone Secret Santa Miss Buncle DE Stevenson

What books did you give or receve this Christmas?

December

Sometimes I think this blog could be renamed 'The Carol Ann Duffy Appreciation Blog' . Her poems always fit in so perfectly with my thoughts and the seasons.

December

The year dwindles and glows
to December's red jewel,
my birth month.

The sky blushes,
and lays its cheek
on the sparkling fields.

Then dusk swaddles the cattle,
their silhouettes
simple as faith.

These nights are gifts,
our hands unwrapping the darkness
to see what we have.

The train rushes, ecstatic,
to where you are,
my bright star.

Carol Ann Duffy

red jewel

I hear your name

This post started out being about my name. My two names written in the front cover of A Room With A View, the fact that after this holiday I shall get round to changing my name on my passport. And so this poem would be used. But.... it changed. Reading this poem in the light of the novel I could just imagine George saying Lucy's name over and over again.
So, this poem is for George and Lucy.

Name

When did your name
change from a proper noun
to a charm?

Its three vowels
like jewels
on the thread of my breath.

Its consonants
brushing my mouth
like a kiss.

I love your name.
I say it again and again
.............

I pray it
into the night
till its letters are light.

I hear your name
rhyming, rhyming,
rhyming with everything.

Carol Ann Duffy

name

22nd August 2009

Another day of indulgence. As you know Warmth and I both share a love of reading. We wanted to reflect this shared interest in some way. So, on the back of each menu we would write a quote which had meaning for us, and may have meaning for the guests on our table. This will take two days - there were 17 tables...

A favourite book for both of us and a quote to acknowledge that it's not always simple.
'A realisation that the founding principle of exiatence is what we call love, which works itself out sometimes not clearly, not cleanly, not immediately, nonetheless ineleuctably.' Yann Martel The life of Pi

'The Owl and the Pusst-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat.'
Edward Lear

There had to be Shakespeare. Warmth sent me this play as a 'save the date' for a date at The Globe.
'You see me,... where I stand,
Such as I am. Though for myself alone
I would not be ambitious in my wish
To wish myself much better, yet for you
I would be trebled twenty times myself,
A thousand times more fair, ten thousand times
More rich, that only to stand in your account
I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends,
Exceed account.'
Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice


The Warmth Family love this musical, and I'm a great musical fan.
'On this night of a thousand stars
Let me take you to heaven's door
Where the music of love's guitars
Plays for evermore.'
Evita

We loved Rapture and she'd become Poet Laureate in 2009.
'as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are
on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream.'
Carol Ann Duffy - Rapture

Part of our Russian literature reading - Gogol
'Countless as the sands of the sea are human passions.' Gogol

Tea

We haven't had a poem for a while. So today it's my favourite lines from

Tea by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.

I like pouring your tea, lifting

the heavy pot, and tipping it up,

so the fragrant liquid steams in your china cup.

I like the questions - sugar? milk? -
and the answers I don't know by heart, yet,

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,

I love tea's names. Which tea would you like? I say,

but it's any tea, for you, please, any time of day,

and I am your lover, smitten, straining your tea.

My favourite line?
and the answers I don't know by heart, yet,
And I think it's the word 'yet' the confidence that we will know our lovers answers to that and so many other questions.

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