This year’s Poetry Society poem to celebrate welcoming the Trafalgar Square Christmas tree was performed by three pupils from the St Vincent’s Catholic primary school, Westminster at the lighting-up ceremony on Thursday 5 December.

Every year since 2009, as part of the Look North More Often project, the Poetry Society commissions a poet to write a new poem. This year’s nativity poem ‘A Baby and A Tree’ was written by poet Valerie Bloom.

The poem will feature on a lightbox near the base of the tree throughout the festive season until 6 January 2025. Look North More Often is a project devised by the Poetry Society to connect new generations of young people to the traditions surrounding the gift of the tree.

A team of poets from the Poetry Society visits primary schools to run poetry workshops, and pupils write their own poems inspired by the Christmas tree. Three of the participating children are then selected to perform on the stage when the mayors of Westminster and Oslo switch on the lights in Trafalgar Square. The young poets were coached this year by poets Cheryl Moskowitz, Coral Rumble and Cassandra Parkin, who brought writing workshops to schools in London and Lincolnshire.

The annual education project follows the progress of the giant tree, from its felling in a forest on the outskirts of Oslo and its journey across the North Sea, to its arrival at the Lincolnshire port of Immingham, and onward journey to Trafalgar Square. A Norwegian spruce tree has been given annually to the people of London since 1947, as a symbol of peace and friendship in recognition of British support during the second world war.

You can read this year’s poem here

Valerie Bloom MBE is the author of several volumes of poetry for adults and children, picture books, pre-teen and teenage novels and stories for children, and has edited collections of children’s poetry. She has presented poetry programmes for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 and has contributed to various other radio and television programmes such as Fine Lines, Woman’s Hour and The Verb. Her poetry has been featured in Poems on the Underground, and included in the GCSE and Caribbean exam syllabuses.