Michael Symmons Roberts' Christmas card poem

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1:09Welcome to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service. I'm Julian May and I'm on the roof of Broadcasting House, the BBC's headquarters in the heart of London. The view is amazing. The city is alight with Christmas decorations. there's a host of bright angels hovering above the shops of Regent Street and there are crowds of people shopping for presents and posting their Christmas cards. The people of Britain send about a billion cards every Christmas. Some of these will include a specially written poem because there's a bit of a tradition among poets to write a Christmas card poem for their family and friends.

1:51So, I asked the poet Michael Simmons-Roberts to write a Christmas card poem and let me follow its creation for In the Studio. Michael Simmons-Roberts has published eight collections of poems and won many awards. He would, I thought, write an engaging and interesting Christmas card poem because Michael was once a staunch atheist but is now a Christian. It's only two weeks until Christmas Day, but we began this journey on the 1st of October and when we met I asked Michael how he would approach this. My poem will have to connect with the Christmas story because it's part of my life and my work and all my poems in some way I think respond to my faith.

2:40So I have an investment, a commitment and a fascination that connects me with the nativity story and with the miracle of the incarnation which is at the heart of what this is. You know, God becomes one of us. I cannot imagine writing a poem for a Christmas card that doesn't include that. But also, it has to feel authentically contemporary as well. And that means bringing the messiness and complexity and threat and anxiety of the world that we live in, the city we're in today, into the poem. There have been several wonderful Christmas poems. T.S. Eliot's The Journey of the Magi. There's a wonderful sonnet by John Donne that encapsulates the incarnation.

3:35Do any of those poems help you in your endeavour to write a Christmas poem today? The more I've thought about writing this Christmas card poem this year, in a year when personally I become a grandfather and that makes you think about the future differently as well but also the world feels like a volatile place and that has to come into it the poem that keeps coming to mind is by Louis McNeice the Northern Irish poet who worked at the BBC in London and was a great great poet who walked the streets around Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus to compose a poem called Autumn Journal, and it culminates in Christmas.

4:20It's a messy, sprawling, potent and profound poem, I think. This is in 1938, and it feels like the world is going somewhere fearful, and everything feels uncertain. It's a huge, capacious, baggy poem, beautifully written, and I've always loved it. The Christmas card poem is going to be much shorter. We're talking a sonnet at the most. But somehow the complexity of bringing in the whole context and having it anchored in a central idea, which in this case will be the incarnation, the nativity, that's what I'm going to try and emulate. Michael, we're sitting in a studio in Broadcasting House where Louis McNeese worked.

5:08it's the 1st of October I think we should go into the streets now that he walked in 1938 and look at what's happening among the people in the shops if there are Christmas decorations should we try that? Surely not, it's October the 1st but let's look, let's see if there's any Christmas out there. In McNeese's poem the city's very much pre-Christmas and Christmas comes much later into it but let's find out i've come into one of the most famous luxury department stores in britain it's in london and i used to love the christmas displays that they have in the windows we used to bring our kids here to look at them so i wonder if they've got one but it's too early first of october so we thought we'll just have a look inside and see if there's any trace of Christmas.

6:04Asked a lady downstairs, have you got any oven calendars? She said, oh, just go to the fourth floor in the lift. Stepped out of the lift on the fourth floor and I'm in Santa's Grotto. It's extraordinary. There's baubles, there's tins of Christmas biscuits, there's snow globes, there's Christmas trees. It is Christmas land here in the heart of London on the 1st of October and it's been here for two months. the trouble with writing any kind of christmas poem is getting beyond the paraphernalia of christmas all the things that are happening in the shops now what interests me is is trying to explore in a poem the extraordinary fact of the incarnation so even beyond the story of the the baby in a manger is the idea that in a wonderful phrase that keeps coming into my head from John Donne's holy sonnet he says immensity cloistered in thy dear womb it's addressed to Mary Jesus his mother immensity cloistered in thy dear womb there's something about that line that captures so much the idea that everything that god who creates sustains and infuses everything becomes concentrated in one person and that person is both god and human both us and god if i can in some way encapsulate that in this short poem that's what i would like to try and do and you can't get all that into a poem but there's something about the shape of a small poem as well which emulates metaphorically the shape of what we're talking about that funneling down into a small vessel a particularity from universality which is what John Donne does absolutely because it's a sonnet it's a sonnet it's 14 lines and it's part of a sequence of sonnets where the last line of one becomes the first line of the next and so on.

8:16So it's an incredibly contained, controlled vessel that he puts these immense theological, mystical conundrums into. So to do something of that length would be to nod to that. But also, on a more mundane level, it works in a Christmas card. A sonnet-length poem will work in a Christmas card, and much beyond 14 lines isn't going to. You can get it onto the card and into the envelope. Exactly, exactly. So that's an appeal as well. Michael, you mentioned that you'd recently become a grandfather and that that was having, well, of course, having a wonderful impact on your life, but also it's a kind of rhyme with the nativity in some ways.

9:05And I'm wondering, is that finding its way into your Christmas card poem? It will. Inevitably, it will. it's a long time since I have held and embraced or rocked a tiny baby and with Ellis first grandchild he was born in July we've just been away for a week on the cold Northumberland coast which was beautiful I spent a lot of time with him and that sense of this beauty and miraculous arrival of a whole new person and the vulnerability, absolute vulnerability and dependence as well.

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11:27This is the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service. I'm Julian May. Michael Simmons-Roberts is visiting London from his home in Manchester. We're meeting to talk about how the work on his Christmas card poem is going. It's the 12th of November. The Christmas lights are twinkling. The pressure's mounting for both the Christmas poet and the Christmas shoppers. The streets are crazy. I found a quiet doorway so I can flick through the Christmas food catalogue that I've just picked up. there's also an advent calendar a beauty advent calendar where you can mark the waiting period for the incarnation of jesus christ by opening each window each day and picking out a different beauty product for yourself all this preparation for christmas is making me think i'm feeling the pressure for this christmas prime i've got to find something that captures the world we're in but also the meaning of christmas and does it for the eclectic audience of all the people I'm going to send Christmas cards to.

12:33It's a tough brief. One thing that I'm struggling with in this poem at the moment is I don't want it just to be an abstract piece of speculative thinking about the incarnation. For me, in my poems, I always feel they need to be anchored in a concrete image, a concrete metaphor. And I've been wrestling with do I do something really counterintuitive and make that a metaphor that seems to fit summer rather than deep winter? Because, of course, the incarnation has nothing to do with snow or robin red breasts or holly or mistletoe. But I like the idea that the particularity of the incarnation coming into a particular time and place could be mirrored in the poem.

13:23I'm wrestling with this whether I come down to something really specific at the end that does relate to what people expect about Christmas and Christmas imagery and if I do what do I do with it to make it different that at the moment is taking up a lot of my thinking space and notebook scribbling space and you have your notebook I have different notebooks for different things and different sizes and so on but if i can get a notebook with those old-fashioned the way they used to make diaries out of this sort of very pale blue paper and very thin paper as well thin leaves of pale blue paper and these are lined as well it's not very big michael is no well i'm i don't draft in it i scribble there are lines all over it the the writing is not sticking to the lines which begs the question why I need lined paper but there we go I I put big loops around things I put arrows across the page to connect one idea with another these are really inchoate very early stage I always date the top of the page so I can look back and think okay around that time I was at that stage of thought and then I can so I I need to have a sort of create a sort of log of where my thoughts are going with it I filled a page here with ideas that seemed quite clear at the time and then I I've drawn a sort of line around them, and there's a really thin strip down the margin where I've written far more notes.

14:50So that was obviously a bigger idea, but I had it after I'd taken up the whole page. So it's chaotic to anyone who's not the person who made it. But for me, I don't want to look... I don't want to be making notes for a poem that look like they could be a piece of thoughtful prose. At this stage, I need it almost to look like a piece of abstract art across pages. It does look a bit like a piece of abstract expressionism, which I suppose is what it is. Yes, you just... Snippets of this and then you think, oh, I'll make an arrow over there because that connects with that. And it needs to feel very free form at this stage for me.

15:34The trouble is, though, that Michael Simmons-Roberts has only a couple more weeks to finish his poem, write his cards and post them. It's the 3rd of December today. London's looking very festive. There are lights and decorations all over the city. As I make my way to the BBC to meet Michael, I hope he has something, something approaching a poem to read to me. I feel very close to finishing it now, which is a good thing if I'm going to catch the pre-Christmas post. part of my starting point was the birth of my grandson this summer just before he was born my son and and his wife had a scan and he sent me a sound file with just a heartbeat of my unborn grandson that was an extraordinary moment i made some notes about that it's um i held a baby this summer for the first time in many.

16:34These are not poetic lines, these are notes at the moment. And then it started to play with, this year our son sent us the heartbeat of his son. Ultrasound from phone to phone. I play it out into this room, a cracked, distorted, rhythmic growl. What does it mean? Does it bring me any closer to the shock of the particular? To pick up, to weigh, to cradle in your arms, one whose fierce devotion. And then it sort of peters out but I was thinking maybe that's a bridge into talking about the nativity that's something but then I found I was going down another track I was walking down Regent Street last time I was in London and saw these incredible angel lights sculptures that are suspended above the streets I thought that's really interesting because the angels in the story of the nativity are, of course, messengers.

17:33And they're also go-betweens. They are partly of our world and partly of the world of the heavens and the divine. So I'm fascinated by the idea in the Bible of angels. The angel goes and visits Mary to tell her this child is to be born, which starts the whole Christmas story. So I started trying to describe what these angels were above the streets here because if they're go-betweens in the Bible, They're sorted between two worlds in London because they are suspended. They are above the shop windows and the annual spectacles that everyone stands and takes photographs of. They're above that. They lift your eyes up.

18:12They lift your thoughts up. So I started playing with trying to describe them for the poem. By this time, I'm playing with titles as well. Do I actually call them something about lights, the Christmas lights, illuminations, and something about that idea of feeling illuminated and illuminated manuscripts? and the idea of lights being both literal in that they are lights, but also being drawn towards the light, following the star, and all that sort of imagery. So I wrote, Gymnasts, these angels, strung from rooftops between rows of shops, toned and vast wings nebulae, hanging from the top of the street.

18:49They dazzle as a host, but close up, wireframes dotted with pin lights. Their wings are empty nets. I got really interested then in the double life that these angels lead, because you see them during the day on a rainy day, of which there have been a lot lately here. And they look like grey, bedraggled, slightly careworn, shattered figures. And their wings just look like sad old fishing nets hung out to dry. but then you see them at night and nothing's changed except the lights but somehow when they're lit it all regathers and the whole direction of them seems to be upwards and above the city and your mind is taken up so in a way for me poetically and also spiritually they are go-betweens in the heart of the city so how can i build on this so i thought i have to get something in the poem about messengers or go-betweens i came up with the idea are they partially because they're hanging are they partially coming down to be with us or are they partially heading up and i started thinking the faintest light wave a baby 2 000 years ago i mean these are notes these aren't lines for poems the edifice we built to shield ourselves from this act of fiercest love of risk devotion it's the second time this note of fierce love fierce devotion has come in and I think that's something I want to keep and then I put but at night it is possible if briefly to glimpse to feel the weight of the world in your hands cradling a baby holding my grandson for the first time but but then that feeling of suddenly the reality of somebody you have been waiting for and anticipating being real and feeling the weight of that real person in your arms, and that becoming a way of talking about the birth of Jesus and about the Nativity, and the possibility that through these go-betweens and what they look like at night, the majesty of them, it's possible to glimpse what it would feel like to hold that baby in your arms.

21:15Michael Simmons-Roberts on the 3rd of December with strong ideas for his Christmas card poem, but still some work to do. Today, it's the 10th of December, and he really needs to get his cards in the post soon if they're to arrive by Christmas, especially if he's sending them to countries outside the United Kingdom. We're meeting again at the BBC, and I'm hopeful that Michael has a finished poem to share. I do. I have a finished poem. and some of the elements that were there in the notebook fragments I read to you have made it through into the final poem. I'm glad to say it now has a structure and a shape.

21:55Well, I'm very excited. Will you read it, please? Of course. I've given it the title Illuminations. This year our son sent us the heartbeat of his son. Now, six months on, we walk in rain Under a swag of empty nets and muscular wireframe angels One week into Advent No tremor yet World still cries war, still acts on it Dusk thickens In response, these lank nets open into pairs of wings stretched between street and sky above bright shop windows. Gymnasts now, these angels, how they strain to slow for us, to meet us in our own time. Their bodies are constellations, every bulb a new sun, circled by its own worlds.

22:59They come to walk with us, to place the weight of a boy god in our arms, to ask if we can bear such fierce love. Michael, that's a wonderful poem. I really like Illuminations and thank you so much. And it's wonderful to see the way that the things that we were talking about have wound their way into the poem. The very striking change, for instance, of the angel illuminations of Regent Street just down the road from being empty nets to beautiful, hopeful angels. I was really struck by the daytime sadness of these drooping, rain-sodden decorations. And then at night they open up and light up and your mood lifts when you see them.

23:56I wanted to capture that. I also thought that was true to what the Christmas story is about, what the incarnation is about. Also, the parallel between, let me call it, the advent of your grandson, the heartbeat, and advent as we understand it, the coming of Christ. I think everyone will have experienced moments in their lives that change your perspective on everything. and for me it changed the way I was looking at the story of the nativity. Suddenly to be reminded of what it's like to hold a baby in your arms, hence the end of the poem, the idea of the angels placing the boy god in our arms and for me that's because I've been holding my own grandson.

24:40That is a human experience that many of us have holding a small vulnerable child and if you haven't had that experience you will know people who have and have been part of that, I think. So it is universal and personal. Michael, there's one very striking line for me. World still cries war, still acts on it. Right at the start of our conversations about this poem, I had Louis McNeice in mind, walking through these same streets, around Regent Street and so on, and responding to a world that seemed to be heading towards war. And I didn't want this to be an unremittingly bleak poem. I want it to be redemptive and have hope.

25:26But you can't turn your back on the fact that we're in a world that's being torn apart in various ways. So that is a reference to McNeese. He has a line about newsboys crying war. So I thought I would give a nod to that. World still cries war, still acts on it. I think we should hear Illuminations once again, having spoken about it. Illuminations. This year, our son sent us the heartbeat of his son. Now, six months on, we walk in rain under a swag of empty nets and muscular wireframe angels. One week into Advent, no tremor yet. World still cries war, still acts on it Dusk thickens In response, these lank nets open into pairs of wings Stretched between street and sky above bright shop windows Gymnasts now, these angels How they strain to slow for us To meet us in our own time Their bodies are constellations Every bulb a new sun Circled by its own worlds They come to walk with us To place the weight of a boy god in our arms To ask if we can bear such fierce love Michael, I think your friends and families and colleagues who are going to receive Illuminations, your poem, in the Christmas cards you send them, will be delighted because it is hopeful.

27:16Also, I think there's a challenge in it too, to some extent. So I think we should head off to the post office and get these in the post, don't you? Let's do it. We've come out of the studio, out of the broadcasting house and around the corner to the post office. but Michael you've only got one I thought you could post a whole ream of Christmas cards I was on my way down I thought this was finished I'd done lots of drafts and on my way down from Manchester today on the train I saw a line break that I wasn't quite right and I wanted to change it and then there was a word that I wanted to insert to make one of the lines run more smoothly I've handwritten those changes and I've put them in a card and I'm going to post them back to myself so they're waiting for me when I get home and everyone else will get the truly finished version of the poem.

28:11Well, let's post that one anyway. There we are. You've been listening to the documentary In the Studio from the BBC World Service presented and produced by me, Julian May, with the poet Michael Simmons-Rovers who's written his Christmas card poem, Illuminations. and we'd both like to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas. Yes, very Merry Christmas to everybody.

28:46The Interview. The best conversations from across the BBC. Today we are spending trivians on war and peanuts on peace. With the people shaping our world. You're making decisions that will have long-term consequences for the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Wind power in the United States has been subsidized for 33 years. Solar for 25 years. That's enough. The interview from the BBC World Service. Listen now wherever you get your BBC podcasts.