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The poet Jackie Kay has written a piece especially for The Christmas Verb. Her poem ‘Is it Christmas?’ shines a light on the experiences of people affected by dementia. Jackie has personal experience of caring for someone with dementia, and she explains that she wanted to look for the positives, and that she finds in dementia a kind of ‘jagged poetry’.

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The writer David Gaffney has tackled the problem of shy people at Christmas parties in a new flash fiction story, ‘Please leave quietly, with someone else’s hat’. For David, the punchline of a flash fiction story should always come somewhere in the middle. His latest book is ‘More Sawn-Off Tales’ (Salt).

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Kamal Kaan is one of our 2015 ‘Verb New Voices’ – a scheme to develop new writing and performing talent from across the North of England (in conjunction with Arts Council England. New Writing North, Arvon Foundation, Freedom Studios and The Writing Squad). Kamal has created an audio piece taking its inspiration from mindfulness, ‘As The Cloud Takes It’s Last Breath’. Listen to find out why he thinks of his work as ‘a beautiful piece of toast’.

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The musical comedian Laurence Owen gamely accepted our challenge to write a song based on the plots of our best loved Christmas films. The result is ‘The Christmas Movie song’, a gallop through the enduring tropes of Christmas films. Laurence tells Ian how the frame of ‘A Christmas Carol’ was invaluable to his song craft.

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Our podcast extra for you is a festive treat from James Yorkston. Recorded earlier this year at the Free Thinking festival James performs his version of the folk carol 'In Dessexshire as it Befell'.