Twas the Night Before Festivus...

"He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,/ And away they all flew like the down of a thistle."

In this Festivus podcast we feature a specially commissioned interpretation of the classic Christmas poem 'A Visit from St Nicholas' aka 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' from the amazing Toby Mottershead and some of Black Diamond Express (listen to Toby on another podcast in our series). And as home is something many of us return to at this time of year, we've also a discussion on poetry and homecoming between New Zealand born Robyn Marsack, Director of the Scottish Poetry Library, and Connecticut bred Ryan van Winkle, Reader in Residence at the SPL and Edinburgh City Libraries. They talk about their respective journeys to Scotland from their native lands and explore the influence of the poems they have brought with them from their homes and a few they have picked up along the way.

From all of us at the Scottish Poetry Library, Season's Greetings, Nollaig Chridheil and Guid Yule!

• Black Diamond Express on Myspace
• 'A Visit from St Nicholas' aka 'Twas the Night Before Christmas' on The Poetry Foundation website
• Festivus on Wikipaedia
• Seinfeld on Wikipaedia (a favourite of both Ryan and Colin, and the home of Festivus)

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Listen now…

Or download as MP3.

First published 18 December, 2009

About Robyn Marsack

Robyn was born and grew up in New Zealand, attended university there and then gained her doctorate from Oxford University, where she also did some teaching before joining Carcanet Press. Having been a freelance publishers' editor, reviewer and translator since moving to Scotland in 1987, she became Director of the SPL in 2000.

About Ryan Van Winkle

Ryan is from Branford, Connecticut. He has been in Edinburgh for 10 years, having studied journalism at Syracuse University. Part of his Reader in Residence remit with the SPL and the City Libraries involves time to work on his own poetry - he is currently putting together his first full collection.

About Clement Clarke Moore

Clement Clarke Moore was born in New York City in 1779 and died in Rhode Island on 10 July 1863. It is alleged that 'A Visit from St Nicholas' was written for and recited to his own children, but its anonymous publication meant that its authorship was seriously contested.

• Read more about Clement Clarke Moore, and the fascinating story of 'A Visit from St Nicholas'
  

We recommend...

	Twenty Contemporary New Zealand Poets: An Anthology Edited by Andrew Johnston and Robyn Marsack Carcanet, 2009. From a Roman housewife to a Chinese bar-owner in Berlin or an Argentine DJ - these are the voices of the heart-sick, the culturally jet-lagged, people from photographs, the "tenants" of lives, cities and destinies. This is what we all are, have been, or will be. SPL shelfmark 2.93
	Scrambled Eggs and Whiskey by Hayden Carruth Copper Canyon Press, 1996. A book that is especially important to Ryan - initially drawn to the title in Barnes & Noble as a teenage boy - he has carried it with him on his travels ever since.
	Immigrant read by Fleur Adcock Poetry Archive Fleur Adcock renders her poem 'Immigrant', about feeling very far from her New Zealand home on moving to London, a poem close to Robyn's heart.

Find out more...

• Check SPL catalogue and borrow these items

Other poems in this podcast ...

• 'Wild Iron', by Allen Curnow
• 'The Islands', by Charles Brash
• 'I was a feminist in the 1980s', by Anne Kennedy
• 'Christmas in New Zealand', by Margary Mahy
• 'My Hundred Year old Ghost' and 'Oregon Trail', both by Ryan Van Winkle

With thanks to...

• Mega thanks to Black Diamond Express for their wonderful response to 'A Visit From St Nicholas'.

Image: 'bowl o' Santas' by Flickr user amy_b. Published under a Creative Commons license