A Christmas Poem by Anthony Burgess
To kick off the festive season this December, we’re sharing a Christmas poem written by Anthony Burgess, and our friends at Carcanet are offering a special offer on Burgess’s Collected Poems.
Food plays an important role in all of Anthony Burgess’s fiction and autobiography, whether it is his Proustian memories of Mancunian sausages and HP sauce, his lauding of the humble garlic bulb, or the poet Enderby’s unappetising concoction, Spaghetti Formaggio Surprise. Christmas, to Burgess, was no different, as this poem shows. Originally written as part of a Christmas keepsake for Plain Wrapper Press in 1977, the poem celebrates the festive joys of a British favourite, the raspberry trifle.
A Christmas Recipe by Anthony Burgess
Of shining silvery crystal be your bowl,
Big as a priest’s paunch or a drunkard’s soul.
Take spongecakes then to fill it, very dry.
Divide them lengthwise, lengthwise let them lie,
Inner face upwards. Smear these faces then
With raspberry jam, then jam them shut again.
Dispose them in the bowl. Take Jerez wine
Or Mavrodaphne; liberally incline
The bottle till, like rain on earth sun-baked,
The liquor has not drenched but merely slaked
That spongy thirst. With milk and eggs well-beaten
Seethe up a custard, thick; with honey sweeten,
Then on your drunken spongecakes swiftly pour
Till they are sunk beneath a golden floor.
Cool until set. Whip cream and spread it deep.
Strew dragées in a silver swoop or sweep.
Cool, and keep cool. A two-hour wait must stifle
Your lust to eat this nothing, this mere T R I F L E.
This poem was written quickly. Gabriel Rummonds, the founder of the art publisher Plain Wrapper Press, remembers that Burgess had visited the press in Verona, Italy, to sign the colophon pages of his previous project, Will and Testament. This was a limited-run art book of 86 copies, containing Burgess’s short story about Shakespeare and accompanying illustrations by the artist Joe Tilson, all wrapped up in a leather binding and a branded wooden box. Rummonds mentioned to Burgess that he wanted to produce a Christmas keepsake to send out to his friends and followers, and that he had asked celebrity chef Julia Child to write a recipe. Child never delivered the manuscript, so the project stalled, until Burgess offered to write a recipe during his visit. Rummonds accepted, and he remembers the swiftness of Burgess’s composition: ‘With drink in hand and my old Olivetti portable typewriter in front of him, he sat down at the marble-topped table, and after one false start banged out this recipe in verse for a raspberry trifle.’
After Burgess left Verona, Rummonds approached the Italian illustrator Fulvio Testa to illustrate Burgess’s poem, but there was one problem: Testa had never seen a trifle.
Plain Wrapper Press’s designer Golda Fishbein offered a solution. She followed the recipe in Burgess’s poem to create the trifle so Testa could make a pen and ink drawing that could accompany the poem. The good news is that Burgess’s recipe worked, and the assembled guests devoured the dessert after Testa had made his drawings.
That Christmas keepsake, produced in 1977 at Plain Wrapper Press’s studio on via Duomo, Verona, is now a very rare collectable, with only 180 copies in existence.
The poem also appears in Carcanet’s recent publication, Collected Poems by Anthony Burgess. Carcanet are kindly offering a special Christmas offer for subscribers to Anthony Burgess News. For 25% off Collected Poems on Carcanet’s Online Shop, use the code IABF25. This offer ends on 23 December 2023.