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23/12/2016 0 Comments

A Christmas poem VI

Christmas Tears

'Christmas cheer
is not found here,
children, we are too poor.
What's left instead,
moldy and stale bread,
and no fancy wreaths on our door.
We'll have no tree
but something came to me
and it'll cure those blues of yours.'
Then Mother took lights,
and at tree height,
afixed them from ceiling to floor
Criss-crossed and V-ed
yes, it turned out to be
the most beautiful tree evermore...
And with that act,
I knew for a fact,
Mother deserved to be adored!

Then Father came in
reeking of his gin
looked upon this and was floored!
His face ghastly,
turned bitter and nasty,
Christmas lights from the wall he tore
'I'll have none of this! '
and he said with a hiss,
'Woman, you are a stupid wh*re.'
And he left a mess
kinda like us, I guess
as we all cried of Christmas's of yore
Still, as Mother was blue
She said, 'This was meant for you'
And the lights went on the wall once more
She said, 'Don't hate,
Father's anger will abate...
He is only sad that we are so poor.'

This happened to be,
Christmas of 1983,
the saddest of that I am sure.
But what I've learned...
love given is love returned
and happiness is something to fight for.   

​(by Lee Degnan)                      

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    .Author

    I recently completed an academic research project (MPhil) about working-class women’s autobiographies. Now I’m writing my own...

    To cut a long story short:

    My dad and both my grandads were coal miners. I was born in Coalville. I belong on this website. 
    I returned to education as a mature student: got a couple of A-levels, went to university; got a BA, an MA, a PhD, and an MPhil. It was not as easy as that. It was not as quick as that. But I did.
    I have spent most of my adult-life studying something. Generally something to do with English literature: mainly something to do with working-class women. My MA is about Women and God – inspired by and emotively written through my experiences as a pupil at Catholic primary and secondary schools. My PhD and MPhil projects are about working-class women writers – inspired and emotively written through my experiences as a working-class woman in a materialistic and class-ridden society. When I was an undergraduate at university, there wasn’t a module about working-class writing. There just wasn't. I didn’t study any working-class texts. I just didn’t. I once gave a research paper about my PhD (ie: talking about my work) and I remember someone laughingly said, ‘Was there a recession in the 1980s? I must have missed that.’ That just about sums it up.
    I have had no working-class peers. I found them in my reading and writing. In my reading and writing I found myself.

    Welcome to my blog.
    It's basically about me.It’s called ‘My Travel Blog’ (because I’m time travelling through my memories of the past). See what I did there?


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