Welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Kern.

Today is December 6th, which means that it is St. Nick's Day, St. Nicholas Day.

So I'm going to kick off a series of Advent and Christmas-themed poems.

There are some really wonderful anthologies of Christmas poems, including an Everyman anthology. And we are going to be giving away one of these

beautiful little Everyman Christmas poem anthologies over on our Instagram page. We have an

Instagram now for the Close Reads Podcast. So if you go over to Instagram and you just type in Close

Reads Podcasts, you will find it. Follow us there. We're going to be posting an image of the book

and giving away two copies, one to one of you who are listening and then to a friend that you tag.

So tag a friend in the comments under that and we will choose a pair of people to win copies of this anthology.

And again, it's just Close Reads Podcasts over on Instagram.

Today's poem, though, is called, well, it's called In the Bleak Midwinter.

It's by Christina Rosetti, who lived from 1830 to 1894.

You probably know this perhaps best as a Christmas carol.

The poem was published under the title A Christmas Carol in the January 1872 issue of Scribner's Monthly

and was first set to music in the English hymnal, a collection called the English hymnal, in 1906 with a

musical setting by Gustav Holst. In 1911, there's a version, an anthem setting by Harold Dark,

which is apparently more complex, and that version has been named the Best Christmas Carol

in a poll of some of the world's leading choir

masters and choral experts in 2008.

That left bit of information is from Wikipedia, the fountain of information.

So I'll read it first, offer a few comments and read it one more time.

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