Poetry Laid Bare

I've always enjoyed poetry and found in it the ability to touch the soul in a way other forms of literature might not, stripping life of the fluff and baggage that obscures human experience and lay it bare. I love - and I mean love - the quality of language - from the esoteric to the raw and wriggling, medieval through to contemporary works. What unifies the art form for me is the common humanity it exposes. Poetry has the ability to stir emotions, make me laugh out loud, probe my conscience, expose my inner thoughts.

John Clare - often referred to as the Peasant Poet - was born in the Northamptonshire village of Helpston in 1793. He wrote on many topics but is best known for his poems about nature and the countryside where he grew up and lived. It is for these that he is one of my favourite Romantic period poets; but it is also for the family connection to my own, for his closest friends in his youth were two brothers - sons of a local farmer - who were directly responsible for encouraging Clare's nascent interests. As a young child, I found the link fascinating, shrinking the huge world of literature into something relatable: the power of friendship to transform lives.

Winter Fields

by John Clare

O for a pleasant book to cheat the sway

Of winter - where rich mirth with hearty laugh

Listens and rubs his legs on corner seat,

For fields are mire and sludge - and badly off

Are those who on their pudgy paths delay.

There striding shepherd seeking driest way,

Fearing night's wetshod feet and hacking cough

That keeps him waken till the peep of day.

Goes shouldering onward and with ready hook

Progs off to ford the sloughs that nearly meet

Across the lands - croodling and thin to view

His loath dog follows - stops and quakes and looks

For better roads - till whistled to pursue.

Then on with frequent jumps he hirkles through.

From: John Clare. Selected Poems

Edited by RKR Thornton

Everyman’s Poetry