Earlier this year the ‘poet laureate of Twitter’, Brian Bilston, published an impressive new volume of poetry. Titled Days Like These, it contains “an alternative guide to the year in 366 poems” – and indeed, provides a poem for every day of the year. We at Write Out Loud decided to take a peek into Brian’s world in the run-up to Christmas. On 23 December, for instance, in a long and entertaining preamble to a fairly minimalist poem, Brian begins: “It was on this day in 1986 that Chris Rea reached Woolley Edge motorway service station on the M1 in his marathon attempt to reach Middlesbrough in time for Christmas.” After listing various mishaps during his journey, Brian’s story ends: “There were to be no further sightings of him after he was seen leaving Woolley Edge services …” The poem itself? Just two lines: “Chris Rea / is nea”.

For 24 December, Brian has a poem in the shape of a Christmas tree that has lost its needles - a poem much shared on social media, sometimes uncredited. There’s another ‘concrete’ poem, in the form of snow falling and finally settling on the ground, to mark a blizzard on 29 December 1962, which was the start of Britain’s Big Freeze of 1962-63, with the first morning without frost arriving on 6 March, and “a cup game between Stranraer and Airdrie being called off thirty-three times”. Elsewhere during the holiday period Brian marks the death of celebrity chef Fanny Cradock in 1994 with ‘Recipe for Midwinter Happiness’, while on Boxing Day he visualises Santa looking back on how this year’s deliveries went.

The poems are marked by Brian’s habitual mix of humour and realism, that has won him over 120,000 followers on Twitter, and sales already approaching a remarkable 15,000 for this latest volume of his poems. It may be getting late for ordering it online – but high street bookshops are still open! His latest poem published on Twitter is called ‘Tense Christmas’.

Meanwhile we at Write Out Loud would like to extend our season’s greetings to all, to wish all our poets a productive 2023 writing their own poetry – and reading the poetry of others, too. And we hope for happiness and good health for everyone!