Christmas crackers: some poetry gift ideas
The Christmas present choice is already snowballing for poetry lovers out there. As well as the Naked Muse calendar of tastefully-photographed male poets, Write Out Loud at Wigan has produced its own Christmas anthology of work by Wigan poets, with proceeds going to Barnardo’s children’s charity. Or there’s WordAid's latest anthology on the theme of survival, Not Only The Dark, in aid of Shelterbox, the internatonal disaster relief charity. The anthology includes poems by Patience Agbabi, Kate Clanchy, David Harsent, Michael Laskey, Alice Oswald, Pascale Petit, Mario Petrucci, Penelope Shuttle, John Siddique, Catherine Smith and many more.
Live Canon, an ensemble of actors performing poetry, have just recorded a CD of poems for Christmas, including works by Anne Bronte, Glyn Maxwell, Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Thomas Hardy, John Donne, Lewis Carroll and Robert Louis Stevenson, and many more. You can buy it here.
In the small press publishing world, Ward Wood Publishing is offering a free copy of Caroline Square’s competition-winning collection An Apple Tree Spouts Philosophy with any single £8.99 poetry book purchase, with £3 going to London Cold Weather shelters. Meanwhile Cinnamon Press is offering a straightforward bogof – buy any full-price poetry book and get a second free.
