🎁 🎄 A Poem-a-Day Advent Calendar: Embrace the Nativity Fast with Daily Poetry Readings
Plus tips on how to read poetry if you're a beginner!
Advent is here! (Or almost here, depending on which tradition or calendar you follow.) In addition to traditional disciplines like fasting and prayer, I love reading poetry during liturgical seasons like Advent. It calms my mind and helps me lean into the themes of each season.
This year, I’m inviting you to join me in this practice with a poem-a-day Advent calendar I’ve titled “Glittering Crumbs,” borrowing a phrase from one of the poems included (“Advent Calendar,” by Gjertrud Schnackenberg). This calendar is a curated list of 40 relatively short poems for each day of the Orthodox Nativity Fast (Nov 15 - Dec 24), but can also be used for Western Advent (Dec 1 - Dec 24). I selected poems that are easily available online and that somehow reflect Advent themes like waiting, longing, incarnation, light, darkness, and … snow.
Find the free version at the bottom of this post, or a more printer-friendly version in my shop.
But first, a bit more about how poetry has helped me in my Christian life…
Why I Read Poetry During Fasting Seasons
They’re short but powerful
The poems I choose are brief, which makes it not only easy to fit into my day, but easy to reread and savour each poem slowly and mindfully. I can read a poem multiple times in one sitting, allowing me to build a deeper relationship with the text, perhaps even memorizing it. This depth of engagement feels like a quiet resistance to the fast-paced world around us.
They’re full of meaning
… Or as I like to say, they’re “meaning bombs.” 💣 Good poems pack a lot of meaning into few words. All the fat and fluff have been trimmed away, and every word serves a purpose, whether seen or unseen. As humans—maybe especially during Advent—we crave meaning, but have inherited a flattened world whose rhythms, times, objects, and places have largely been emptied of deeper meaning. Like Liturgy, poetry re-connects me with enchantment, where I am free to assume everything has a deeper meaning and even the most mundane objects are embedded in layers of symbolism. In short, poetry helps me recover a sacramental view of the world that sometimes needs rekindling.
They help Me sit with mystery and paradox
Poems often leave things unsaid, confronting us with mystery and unanswered questions. This ambiguity can be uncomfortable, but it’s similar to the paradox of faith. Reading poetry becomes a parallel discipline to prayer, helping me “live the questions,” as Rilke (one of my favorite poets!) says.
They Help Me Stay Embodied
Generally, poems are meant to be read aloud, not just silently. They are often crafted with subtle rhythm, cadence, rhyme scheme, and/or other rhetorical devices that can be perceived by the body as well as the mind. Reading poetry is one way I nourish a meaningful, incarnational synergy between the mind, body, and soul God has fashioned me with.
How to Read Poetry: A Simple Method
When I first started studying literature seriously in college, I found most poetry opaque and obscure. Then a professor shared a simple method that transformed my understanding: read each poem three times, focusing on a different layer each time.
Like so:
1. Literal Content
The first time you read a poem, read for the basics: What’s happening in the poem? Who’s involved, and whose point of view is it written from? Where and when is it situated? Summarize the “story” of the poem in an objective way—just the basics, no interpretation yet!
2. Literary Form
On your second read, notice the form and language: Are there particular sounds, rhythms, or symbols that stand out? How do these elements support the meaning? Does the poem have a particular form (like a sonnet), rhyme scheme, or metre? Does the cadence feel choppy or fluid, fast or slow? There are many other literary aspects you can read for in this layer, but these are the basics.
3. Interpretation
Finally, ask yourself: What is the “aboutness” of this poem? Meaning, what deeper thing(s) are all the literal and literary components trying to point us toward? Common themes in poetry include love, hope, loss, beauty, longing, impermanence. Focus on what speaks to you personally—don’t worry too much about the author’s original intent, this isn’t for a class or research paper.
For a devotional approach, ask yourself: what hints of truth, goodness, or beauty do I see here? What does this poem reveal about what it means to be human in the image of God? And always try reading the poem aloud at least once—it brings out a whole new layer of meaning.
About the Poems in this Advent Calendar
The forty poems in this collection were chosen because they each, in their own way, speak to common Advent themes like waiting, fulfillment, the first and second coming of Christ, incarnation, history, darkness, etc. Still, not all the poems are explicitly Christian, and many confront difficult aspects of the human condition, including grief, illness, and loneliness. I also aimed for poems that were on the shorter side and could be found on free and publicly available website.
NOTE: Due to copyright, I can’t provide the full text of each poem, but I’ve included the title, author, and a hyperlink where you can find it online. If a link breaks, simply search for the poem by title and author.
Are you following a Western rite Advent? Simply start on the poem for December 1.
Finally, alongside each poem is a “focus word”—a single word from the text to center your attention, particularly if you’re new to poetry reading.
3 Ways to Incorporate Poetry Reading into Your Advent
1. Morning Reflection
Read the poem in the morning over breakfast and carry a favorite phrase or the focus word with you throughout the day.
2. Shared Reading
Read the poem aloud with family or friends over a meal. Take turns reading it multiple times and share your reflections.
3. Journaling
After reading the poem alone, take a few moments to jot down what resonates with you.
Want to join me in this practice? Find the free poem-a-day list below, and if you'd like an easily printable version, you can purchase one in my shop.
“Glittering Crumbs”: A Forty-Day Poetry Advent Calendar
11/15 (Focus word: the end): Christina Rossetti, “Sunday Before Advent”
11/16 (sit): Dorothy Sayers, “Byzantine”
11/17 (age): W. S. Merwin, “In the Winter of My Thirty-Eighth Year”
11/18 (dust): Robert Frost, “Dust of Snow”
11/19 (scattered): Rainer Maria Rilke, “I am praying again, Awesome One”
11/20 (cold): Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Lines: The cold earth slept below”
11/21 (revealed): Joseph Brodsky, “December 24, 1971”
11/22 (rejoice): Madeline L’Engle, “First Coming”
11/23 (wonder): TS Eliot, “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”
11/24 (time): CS Lewis, “What the Bird Said Early in the Year”
11/25 (doubt): Thomas Hardy, “The Oxen”
11/26 (exile): Sandra M. Castillo, “Christmas, 1970”
11/27 (mystery): William Butler Yeats, “The Magi”
11/28 (crumbs): Gjertrud Schnackenberg, “Advent Calendar”
11/29 (star): Joseph Brodsky, “Star of the Nativity”
11/30 (night): Rainer Maria Rilke, “Advent”
12/1 (eternity): Emily Dickinson, “Our journey had advanced”
12/2 (true): Sir John Betjeman, “Christmas”
12/3 (shutter): Mary Jo Salter, “Advent”
12/4 (dome): Jane Kenyon, “Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter, 1993”
12/5 (space): Marjorie Pickthall, “Stars”
12/6 (journey): TS Eliot, “The Journey of the Magi”
12/7 (dream): Eva Gore-Booth, “The Incarnate”
12/8 (luminary): Robert Frost, “Acquainted with the Night”
12/9 (breaking): CS Lewis, “As the Ruin Falls”
12/10 (joy): Madeleine L’Engle, “The Winter is Cold, is Cold”
12/11 (veiled): Mary Rose O'Reilley, “Icon”
12/12 (holy place): John O'Donohue, "The Inner History of a Day"
12/13 (immortality): Emily Dickinson, “Reticence”
12/14 (tide): Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts, “Night in a Down-town Street”
12/15 (waiting): Scott Cairns, “Early Frost”
12/16 (stillness): James L. Dickey, “The Hospital Window”
12/17 (maps): John Donne, “Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness”
12/18 (almost): Christian Wiman, “Hard Night”
12/19 (moment): Stuart Kestenbaum, “Prayer for the Dead”
12/20 (sun): Ray McNiece, “Winter Solstice”
12/21 (turning): William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming”
12/22 (surrender): Mary Karr, “Descending Theology: Christ Human”
12/23 (ring): Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Ring out, wild bells”
12/24 (faith): George Santayana, “O World, Thou Choosest Not the Better Part”
A few other resources to help you stay sane this Advent…
In my store, you’ll find a few recordings of webinars I hosted several years ago to help folks navigate spiritual disciplines and fasting seasons in safe and life-giving ways. You don’t have to be a trauma survivor to benefit, and I’ve heard from many who’ve found the webinars useful even after multiple views.
This is a really great idea! Thank you for sharing.