Today we are looking at a Christmas poem by a wonderful poet called John Siddique. It’s from his book, ‘Don’t Wear It On Your Head’.

Read the poem out loud. Does it sound like what you think a poem sounds like, or does it sound like a conversation? Does it rhyme? Look at some of the descriptions – ‘red lipstick wearing aunties / who give scary red kisses’. Do you have people in your family who do that? John also uses sound in the poem – ‘the snow makes it all quiet’. How does this add to the picture the poem is making of a Christmas day?

Snowfall

It snowed last Christmas day where I live,
so we went up the hill opposite
while everyone else sat inside
with their grannies and their uncles,
and the red lipstick wearing aunties
who give scary red kisses. Everyone was eating,
and talking, and eating and steaming up their
windows. Repeating little worlds of families
from house to house to house.

We went up the hill in the snow,
there was no sound, everyone’s inside.
Those without families were doing what they do,
even the silence of alone seems noisy.

The snow makes it all quiet.
Away from the windows, away from the dinner,
there is a blanket over the earth, the air is scrubbed
clean, and nothing is moving.

I wish it would snow for a year, and the telly breaks.
Then the radio goes off, and we forget to talk,
and we get a year of this crispy breathing quiet.

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