50 Words for Snow

You might have noticed that we have a snow theme on our site just now and it was almost snowing in St Albans on my walk today:

The novelist Marcus Sedgwick is no stranger to OGOM, some of you will have been lucky enough to have caught his wonderful plenary talks at OGOM events. Marcus’s meditation on Snow is currently available in five episodes on Radio 4 where it has been Book of the Week. You can follow the link here and enjoy listening whilst tucked up with your favourite nightcap or a mug of snowman soup (marshmallows in hot chocolate).  

My own snow favourites (apart from Hans Andersen’s Snow Queen and Narnia, where it is always winter and never Christmas) are Jame’s Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ from his short story collection Dubliners:

Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

And Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow which is a magical and mesmerising incantation inspired by the many, many, words Eskimos have for snow…….so beautiful.

Don’t forget too that you can revisit Bill’s lively and imaginative talk from the Manchester Gothic Festival on snow queens and snowbound landscapes here