Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a party and this heart-warming selection shows that there are all sorts of ways of staging a festive celebration.
 
In DA Prince’s opening poem, we find that even the birds in the garden are “quivering in best-party feathers”. Elsewhere, there’s a Boxing Day game of sardines and a grandmother who arrives in silver curls and a velvet coat bearing a badly-chosen gift. There’s also a family gathering populated by a whole host of seasonal TV characters; Del and Rodney appear in fancy dress as Batman and Robin while the Vicar of Dibley arrives:
 
“…after eating four Christmas lunches,
sodden from jumping in deep puddles.”
from ‘Partying with The Vicar of Dibley’ by Jeanette Burton
 
What the poems illustrate is that a Christmas party doesn’t depend on mistletoe, tinsel or mulled wine. In fact, all that’s really needed to make merry is “a warm room of friends”.
Selected by Di Slaney and Katharine Towers.
Poems by Andre Bagoo, Jeanette Burton, Kristina Dipr
ose, Jonathan Edwards, Marie-Louise Eyres, Lorraine Mariner, Michael Pedersen, DA Prince, Penny Sharman and Aruna Stannard.
 
Cover illustration by Sara Boccaccini Meadows.