With America's uniquely unique "peaceful transfer of power" heading toward its final week, the President-Elect has had plenty of time on his hands to annex the entire western hemisphere: the renamed Gulf of America, the Panamaga Canal, Canada as fifty-first state... Of all these soon-to-be imperial acquisitions, experts seem to agree that Greenland is viable and perhaps even necessary. So welcome to this weekend's entry in our Mark Steyn Club anthology of video poetry, filmed the last time Trump proposed buying Greenland from the Danes. That manifest if chilly destiny in turn reminded me of what to my mind is the greatest poem on the subject - Greenland by James Montgomery.
Montgomery wrote Greenland two centuries ago - 1819 - and published it in his newspaper - The Sheffield Iris. He had done the same a couple of years earlier with what has proved a rather better-known work over the centuries: the Christmas carol "Angels from the Realms of Glory". But I have always had a soft spot for this more ambitious project. As much as anything else, Greenland is a tale of climate change - profound and devastating and nothing to do with man and his SUVs and automatic washing machines. In this video I discuss the background to the poem and its author, and then give it a whirl. To watch (or hear) "Greenland", please click here and log-in.
If you'd like to catch up on earlier poems in the series, you can find them on our Sunday Poems home page. As with Tales for Our Time, we're archiving our video poetry in an easy-to-access Netflix-style tile format that we hope makes it the work of moments to prowl around and alight on something that piques your interest, whether Keats or Kipling,
Steyn's Sunday Poem is a production of The Mark Steyn Club. We launched the Steyn Club seven-and-a-half years ago, and in this our eighth season I'm immensely heartened by all the longtime SteynOnline regulars - from Fargo to Fiji, Madrid to Malaysia, West Virginia to Witless Bay - who've signed up to be a part of it. Membership in The Mark Steyn Club does come with some non-poetic benefits, including:
~Our nightly audio adventures in Tales for Our Time, the sixty-eighth of which starts next weekend;
~Audio series on pertinent topics, such as our serialisation of Climate Change: The Facts;
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly, such as this coming Wednesday's;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show and other video content, including today's poem;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, should I ever again be healthy enough to make any;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~An advance opportunity to join me and my guests on our annual Mark Steyn Cruise;
~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here. And for our special Gift Membership see here. Oh, and by the way, that Steyn cruise always includes a live performance of a Sunday Poem.
One other benefit to Club Membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, if you like or dislike this feature, or consider my poem reading a bust, then feel free to comment away below. Please do stay on topic on all our comment threads, because that's the way to keep them focused and readable. With that caution, have at it (in verse, if you wish).
