Writer, musician, composer and linguist Annie Kissack was named as the fifth Manx Bard in 2018.

This month she shares one of her winter-themed poems, along with a little explanation of what inspired her to write it

I’m delighted to have been asked to write the poetry column this month; it’s been a while. I feel I need to contribute a seasonal poem, but with the world and the weather no longer playing ball, who knows what sort of winter we’ll have?

Gloominess has been hanging round for too long and my own recent poems have been getting far too misty and uncertain.

So I’m heading back to a world I know from years ago and my childhood in Onchan, where once we woke up to a dazzle of snow and an unexpected visitor on the horizon.

Unexpected Visitor

The snow brought a new mountain,

bigger, bolder than our own, and twice as white.

It hovered in the cold air beyond the bay,

a bit of Cumberland broke loose

and lurking tight behind

our own low, scruffy promontory.

Boys at skid outside the supermarket

stopped and shrieked and pointed for

here was the iceberg that sank Titanic,

here was Everest unleashed and at our door.

So we retrieved our coal-house trays

and off we stumbled, sherpas of the snow-line.

But first, to cross the foothills of the golf course

in borrowed wellingtons, too big, too holey.

No grumpy men to shout ’Keep off!’ today

and snow, such snow, enough for sliding

into wide crevasses here and there

and who cared anyway for we were soon

all deep soaked-up and numb.

And by the time the snow-bike

had failed to skim the rabbit holes

in slalom style and simply sunk,

and Johnny Clague had hit the hedge

and serve him right, the show-off,

well, the giant mountain, much ignored,

had slunk off like another sulky boy

and everybody laughed.

So we just stayed put right where we were

till snow turned into mud.

by Annie Kissack

wwwmanxbard.im