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Lancashire Times
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Steve Whitaker
Literary Editor
@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social
1:00 AM 24th December 2024
arts

Christmas Poem Of The Week: Unto Us A Child is Born By Beth Brooke

Unto Us A Child Is Born

Triptych
egg tempura on oak panels



Traditional as a devotional aid,
this triptych of the birth of Christ
is re-presented in the modern idiom:
pregnancy test in Mary's hand,
Joseph in running kit,
this is a low key Annunciation.
In the central panel the Holy Infant,
delivered by Caeserean section,
is handed to his mother by an angel in scrubs.
In the final panel the child is celebrated:
a black and white cat looks on,
worshippers bring food and
tiny knitted cardigans, take selfies
to memorialise this nativity of hope.
in the background, choirs of angels sing.


Image by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash
Image by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash
Beth Brooke's offbeat contemplation of a triptych - 'egg tempura on oak panels' - might, on the surface, resemble a pastiche of the modern process of maternity were her poem not deliberately, and ironically, undercut by its own concluding sense of moment.

For the detail - captured in chronological stages like the three panels it describes - is resplendent with the furnishings of an idiom: the test, the running kit, the selfies' and 'knitted cardigans' are the measures of an age of the commonplace. But not of indifference.

The individuality of each experience of childbirth confers some of the magic of a miracle on the new mother and her immediate entourage. And in this sense, her maternal 'miracle' is unique, a species, almost, of solemn validation; her centering in the tableau, albeit circumscribed by the presence of the camera and the snap-happy relatives, is another form of 'Annunciation', overseen by the protective, and near-oxymoronic, image of 'an angel in scrubs'.

And there is hope in another miracle - that of human continuity in despite: Beth Brooke's skilled conflation of the intensely personal and the metaphysical abstract was conceived after the birth of her grandson.

A happy Christmas to all of our readers!





'Unto Us A Child Is Born' is reproduced with the kind permission of the author.