Listen to English - learn English!

Alternative content

It is very cold here in England, and there is lots of snow on the ground. What do you think about snow? Yes, snow can be cold and wet and miserable. But it can also can change familiar things – our houses and gardens, our streets and our cities – into something strange and new and beautiful.

Good poetry is like snow – it too can change familiar things into something strange and new and beautiful. So I looked for a poem about snow to read you, and I have found one by a poet called Brian Patten.

Brian Patten was born in Liverpool in 1946, which means that he is nearly as old as I am! In the 1960s, he was one of a group of young poets from Liverpool whose poems became very popular and widely read. It is easy to understand why – the poems are direct, simple and often funny. Brian Patten is today one of Britain’s leading poets, and he has written lots of poems both for adults and for children. There are links to some of his poems, and to more information, on the website. I sent him an e-mail, to say that I would like to use this poem in a podcast, and he has kindly agreed that I can. So here it is, Remembering Snow.

I did not sleep last night.
The falling snow was beautiful and white.
I dressed, sneaked down the stairs
And opened wide the door.
I had not seen such snow before.
Our grubby little street had gone.
The world was brand-new, and everywhere
There was a pureness in the air.
I felt such peace.
Watching every flake
I felt more and more awake.
I thought I had learned all there was to know
About the trillion million different kinds
Of swirling frosty flakes of snow.
That was not so.
I did not know how vividly it lit
The world with such a peaceful glow.
Upstairs my mother slept.
I could not drag myself away from that sight
To call her down and have her share
The mute miracle of the snow.
It seemed to fall for me alone.
How beautiful our grubby little street had grown!

(Copyright Brian Patten. Used here with permission.)

  

 Get MP3 (2 MB | 3:19 min)

Alternative content

Hello, everyone. It is very good to be making a new podcast. My internet connection is working again. Thank you very much for your patience, and a big thank you in particular to all those of you who sent me e-mails saying how sorry you were about my internet problems.

It is a long time since we had any poetry on the podcast. From time to time, I look at a book of English poetry and wonder whether I can use any of the poems. But very few poems are written in simple English which is easy to understand. My friend, Margaret Scorey, however writes poems which use simple and direct English, and are therefore very good for English learners. Here is a poem she wrote about a month ago. She wrote it for a woman who had recently become a grandmother. But the woman’s family, and the new grandchild, were in America, so grandmother travelled to America to hold her new grandchild in her arms for the first time. Margaret has called the poem “To Hold you, to hold you”.

My longing is to hold you,
to feel your soft cheeks against mine
to look into your gentle eyes
to touch your hair
and feel the warmth of your breath.

Soon I will.

But know that when I return,
the ache will be as great as it is now,
softened only by memories.

But one thing, I will be able to say is,
‘I’ve done it, I’ve done it, I’ve held you’.

Poem copyright Margaret Scorey, 2007, used with permission.

Photo of grandmother and new baby by Brian Hession/Flickr

  

 Get MP3 (1 MB | 2:16 min)