New Poems Inspired by John Clare

This section contains new poems written about or inspired by John Clare. These may have won prizes around the world. 

Over time this will grow to show the variety of different poetry. If you have any poems that you would like to submit for display on the website please contact David Dykes at the John Clare Cottage.

• Walking With John Clare

  GARY SODEN

  The asylum towers made him feel small
  As if peering up to a teacher
  The ivy climbed over the crumbling wall
  And appeared to him a strange, green creature.

  The afternoon sun did nothing to calm
  The turmoil inside his head
  He stared at the sun beetle held  in his palm
  And wished he could go to bed.

  Escape! …was tonight or never
  The forgotten ladder left by the garden wall
  He was about to sever
  The line between nothing….or all!

  Only the full moon saw his flight
  As the bracken deadened his fall
  One more poor soul into the night
  One less soul at morning call.

  He stole past the iron gates
  Encased by the red-bricked posts
  If only he  could shake off the weights
  That left him prey to the ghosts.

  The forest was uninviting
  As he weaved between the trees
  The black of night was blighting
  He fell crying to his knees.

  The lights were on in the tower
  Was his midnight dash discovered?
  Was this to be the hour
  His homeward quest was smothered.

  It was a false alarm
  His understudy  had  worked well
  The stuffed suit;  like a scarecrow on a farm
  Had fooled the warning bell.

  He rose to his feet and looked around
  And  stared into the dark
  The girl of his dreams must be found
  That first love that made its mark.

  The moon was covered by clouds
  How he longed for the sunrise
  That would wake him and diminish the funeral shrouds
  And his children’s stoney eyes.
   
  He came upon a cornfield
  A restful sea of gold
  Whose harvest would never be milled
  Unless his heart was sold.
   
  Crossing the fields he sneered
  At the damned fences
  Every day he neared
  The thirst that never quenches.

  He arrived at his  hamlet by dawn
  After his nighttime rove
  Exhausted, clothes well worn
  For his first love,  he strove.

  He hammered on the oak door
  ‘I want my white breasted dove’
  ‘I can’t stand it anymore
  I want my long lost love.’

  The frightened farmer pulled him inside
  Bloody footprints on the farmhouse floor
  ‘Is that you,  John Clare;  I can’t decide
  Have you survived some terrible war?

  ‘I have come for Mary Joyce
  She needs me now I know
  But I cannot hear her voice
  Bring her to me and I’ll go.’

  ‘John, John;  she was lost in a fire
  Only three years ago
  She was your hearts’ desire
  And you’re the last to know.’

  ‘Then there’s nothing left for me
  Even my lifetime love has gone
  A prisoner; never to be free
  I’m like a drying river where dwells a dying swan.’

  ‘They’ve taken the pastures; they’ve taken the fields
  For their wealth expansion
  Who knows what the land yields
  From their manorial  mansion.’

  The farmer sat him down to rest
  And offered bread and  ham
  ‘Are you really John Clare or do you jest.
  ‘No!  John Clare; I am.

  Gary was inspired by John Clare's walk from High Beech in Epping Forest back to Northborough in 1841. 

• Where the Sunlight Falls

  TIM WYKES

  Where the Sunlight falls, across the hills, songbirds in a tree top sing, the wind blows on its path across the fields of Barley, they gently bow their heads to their host, my soul always alive in that scene. A moment to treasure, a time of the pure flow that holds my thoughts that reach up into the sunlit beams that draws a man home to his roots.

  For there it has ever been, among the Hedgerow thorns the Cowslip, the Wild Rose and Nettle, the Bluebells and vibrant Gorse, a man's spirit is sown and yet scattered to all he surveys. For the Sun boldens and enlightens the gift of life every waking day never the same scene set a changing paradise of the seasons. Wisher on the wind, never knowing where it should be carried.

  You may find me as I walk those humble trails, under the bough of an old Oak tree and I will beckon you to hold for a while, that nature gives her blessings to those who hear her callings, where the sunlight falls, among the canopy of leaves that sing softly while swaying in the breeze there lays my Oaken heart, softened only by the music of life that seeps through the land and through this humble body...

  For the land knows her children well, knows this mind well, as this cup overflows in the dreams and life that is given reason and passions risen a heart beating in unison within his field of dreams. I give my love freely as one in unison I wander on till that setting sun shall cast his rays no more and onward  still those horizons cast and shadows set once more and graced in darkness till once more should come the rising dawn.

  Tim lives in Brixworth, originally from Spratton and has spent his life in the area. His family in Spratton goes back to 1780.

  His writing comes from his love of the land, most of his ancestors in his father's side were farmers up until his grandfather selling the old dairy. But his love of Northamptonshire is in the blood and his spirituality ( he follows a Druidic/Shamanic Spirituality )and very much loves the land. 

  John Clare. From Hertford to Helpston

  ROBERT WILSON

  He walked for three days,
  returning from High Beach,
  is said to have eaten grass.
  We drove in ninety minutes
  and found a place of peace,
  understood that for all of us
  life brings doubts, fears, hurts
  but here is healing,
  the song of the blackbird,
  ants in a woodpile,
  the fragrance of flowers
  in his garden
  and even in our age of chatter
  there is time to read,
  to watch and to listen.

  Robert Wilson is a member of a poetry group based in Hertford. The group visited the Clare Cottage in June 2017.

  Stranger than the Rest

  MARGARET COPE

  Distanced from your parents by literacy
  Separated from the girl you loved by class
  Patronised in London as your poems were feted
  Alienated from villagers on your return
  Estranged from the land you loved by enclosure
  Exiled from hope and Helpston in your Northborough cottage
  Enclosed in the asylum in Northampton
  Isolated, unvisited by your family.

  Identified with the earth in St Boltoph’s graveyard
  Hailed as one of the great English poets
  Celebrated by many in your homely cottage.

  Margaret Coupe lives in the Peak District.  She taught English in comprehensive schools for nearly forty years.  Before the advent of the National Curriculum, when teachers had more freedom to choose what they taught, she introduced her students to John Clare and they really responded.

  This prose-poem was inspired by a long-awaited and most enjoyable visit to John Clare Cottage.  Her husband, Laurence, lectured in English at Manchester Metropolitan University.

  He has written extensively about literature and ecology.  If you visit his website, you will find an article ‘The Green World’, which refers to Clare: www.laurencecoupe.co.uk

  John Clare of Helpston

  JANEY DOWSE

  Our modern pressures of celebrity
  He also felt two hundred years ago.
  Born in obscurity and poverty
  At Fenland's edge where seasons' pace is slow.
  In tune with all the rhythms of the life
  That in the fields and woods and streams abounds;
  In village home, he captured joys and strife
  Of shepherds' lot, and traced the daily rounds
  Of toil at plough, in dairy and at mill.
  But though his verse earned riches and brought fame,
  The "ploughman poet" loved the village still,
  Until the fickle crowds forgot his name.
  Tossed him aside in search of newer prey
  And madness claimed him till his dying day.

  Janet Dowse, born in Liverpool now lives in Bourne, Lincolnshire.Janet was Head of English at Bourne Grammar School for nearly 30 years and wrote this sonnet after a visit to the John Clare Cottage.

• Clare

  JO HASLAM

  All it takes is three days
  and one dogged step after another:
  all it takes is three nights
  sleeping in ditches, grass for his dinner
  supper and breakfast. This is John Clare
  making his way from High Beach
  his sights fixed square on the one direction.

  He puts me in mind of our own
  desperate boy driven to tramp
  the hillsides at night when all he wants
  is to close his eyes and find himself
  in the right dream. But he can’t rest,
  or eat or sleep, his feet are blistered
  from walking so long off kilter and blind
  out in the cold with the stars clouded over.

  Like any of those lost to themselves
  he doesn’t know when to turn
  left or right, if the wind on his skin blows
  west or east – but he keeps coming back
  to the one place – and he’d sleep
  if he could in a ditch or field
  at the edge of a wood where the owl floats
  its question into the trees.

  While Clare knows he’s reached
  striking distance of Helpston
  when the earth starts to breathe
  under his feet and the hair to lift
  at the back of his neck
  as Glinton spire glimmers out of the mist
  that still hangs thick on the fields

  and I think of our boy on the phone
  from the hospital ward – his voice
  as he said I think I’ll come home
  And I dreamt him asleep, knees pulled
  to his chest, his feet exposed,
  a summer night with the moon daisies out
  and the moths spinning white over his head.

   
  On the road are scattered his drawings, books
  scribbled notes, the clothes he’d given
  or swapped or lost, like the trail
  the children left for themselves

  As for Clare he’s reached Swordy Well
  to find it clogged with bottles and cans.
  A rusty car’s upturned in a bush,
  the road he’ll tread again
  and again is choked with rubble
  and grass; but he stops,
  to scratch his name in the limestone

  JO HASLAM is 65 and lives in Huddersfield. She works as a bibliotherapist and has had two collections published by Smith/Doorstop: The Sign for Water and Lunar Moths. She spends 15 hours a week writing, although sometimes the day job intrudes. Her garden is both a help and a hindrance to her writing, but extensive reading is only ever an aid. She likes to write at night, in the kitchen and is so addicted to coffee that she often takes her mug with her to the bus-stop. 

• Give Me Back My Land

  VIVIEN FOSTER

  Like gypsies but without their history
  We find ourselves encamped within this wood
  Uncertain who will chase us from its shade.
  We tattered squatters - we, the dispossessed
  Like Clare's old friends, his 'quiet pilfering race'
  We now shall learn that charity stops at home
  While we from homes are driven without a thought
  By those who, having much, would have much more.

  'Improvements!' say the gentry 'Greater yields!'
  Corn ricks grow many, but the labourers, few.
  Bent under debt, still paying for a war
  With someone overseas we never saw,
  The country shouts for corn, the hedges fall
  And 'Profit!' cry the fence posts by our path.
  Injustice stalks the farms and takes our wage.
  I've heard brave souls protest and argue change
  But slow as honey dripping from a spoon
  The lawyers talk their talk and dip their pens.

  I dreamt last night, as rain dripped on our heads
  Of all my family harvesting the fields
  The gleanings taken home to make our bread,
  The rich and tasty stew of coney meat
  Filling our bellies, wife and children too!
  And then, to darken all the golden glow
  Of that, our village life so safe and snug
  Came whirling arms of metal, moving fast,
  Ripping the corn from out our calloused grip.
  Bare, all the fields, and closed the farming tracks
  No place for people now, machines do all.

  And then I woke and knew a sharp despair
  To see my children hungry, wife in fear.
  Enclosure like a subtle greedy tide
  Has washed farm labourers out of history
  And I who walked a village-worth of acres
  Am plodding, homeless, down a strange highway
  To put my wife into - as good as prison -
  My children I shall see but once a week.
  I grew a country's food, by invitation
  And now am destitute - wake up, great nation!

  After the Napoleonic Wars Britain had a National Debt twice the size of its GDP.  Landowners were enclosing any available land to grow corn for export and profit, at the same time using new machinery like the threshing machine to till and harvest larger fields. The Poor Laws were being changed to stem the tide of unemployed seeking help.

  Vivien lives in Peterborough and is a member of more than one poetry group including Poets United.  This local group, for more than a decade, has furnished Peterborough with its Poets Laureate.  It also provides performance poets who read their own work at events such as the Heritage Festival, the Whittlesey Straw Bear celebrations and commemorative events at the Museum and local schools.  Vivien writes tongue-in-cheek observations on modern life, poems inspired by fantasy themes or historical events.  One day she will succeed at writing a sestina, if she can unplug the phone and the internet.

• John Clare of Helpston

  Janet Dowse

  Our modern pressures of celebrity
  He also felt two hundred years ago.
  Born in obscurity and poverty
  At Fenland's edge where seasons' pace is slow.
  In tune with all the rhythms of the life
  That in the fields and woods and streams abounds;
  In village home, he captured joys and strife
  Of shepherds' lot, and traced the daily rounds
  Of toil at plough, in dairy and at mill.
  But though his verse earned riches and brought fame,
  The "ploughman poet" loved the village still,
  Until the fickle crowds forgot his name.
  Tossed him aside in search of newer prey
  And madness claimed him till his dying day.

  Janet Dowse, born in Liverpool now lives in Bourne, Lincolnshire. Janet was Head of English at Bourne Grammar School for nearly 30 years and wrote this sonnet after a visit to the John Clare Cottage.

• One Lilac Egg

  Noel Connor

  By a sedgy pond
  near Langley Bush
  a  yellowhammer’s nest,
  tufted and progged,
  rooted in a tangle
  of tall dried grass
   
  A single lilac egg
  cupped in sunshine,
  the alabaster shell
  traced and trailed
  in rich brown ink.

  Nature flourished
  in your scribbled hand,
  bedded on a thatch
  of rush and crimpled reed,
  a poem about to hatch.

• John Clare, His Early Poems

  JORDAN SMITH

  He wrote on scraps of paper his mother craved
  For her own purposes, tedious, domestic,
  Practical. He hid his drafts away;
  Practice in penmanship or arithmetic,
  He’d lie straight-faced if any such were found.
  He spoke one once. He claimed it.  The room went round
   
  With laughter. Later, he found a stratagem
  That suited his desire be heard
  Unmocked. He’d read his poems and say he’d found them
  In an almanac. Then they thought them fine,
  Though as he grew more deft, more sure in verse,
  He found he liked best those that they thought worst.

  And yet they cared and prayed. His mother talked
  Of service, her highest hope for him, in livery
  To a lord. He nodded as a horse will, balked
  and bridled, pawed and stood his ground, quivered,
  Feigned stupidity. Feckless and disheveled
  He wrote to tell the truth and shame the devil.

  Jordan Smith is the Edward E. Hale Jr. Professor of English at Union College in Schenectady, New York. These poems are excerpted from Clare’s Empire published by The Hydroelectric Press

• John Clare at School with the Gypsies

  JORDAN SMITH

  Were it not for dread of winter cold,
  He might have gone with them, whose talk
  Was horses, lasses, dogs, who were less bold
  Than rumor claimed and cannier, who balked
  When questioned closely about God, or why
  Their men had a crooked finger (sly,

  They broke them to avoid the king’s levy
  Of soldiers that would not claim a crippled man).
  Their thefts were petty, their arts were mummery–
  Beguiling, fortune telling. They could mend pans,
  But not their slandered, squalid reputations.
  One reverend judge suggested extirpation,

  Hardly needed once the groves were cut,
  The fields fenced, paths gated, commons turned
  To private profit. They dwindle now like June
  Flowers in a storm or ash trees burned to ash.
  He should have gone too. His sadness was a riddle
  They might have answered. They taught him how to fiddle.

  Jordan Smith is the Edward E. Hale Jr. Professor of English at Union College in Schenectady, New York. These poems are excerpted from Clare’s Empire published by The Hydroelectric Press

• First Alphabet

  Noel Connor

  Little oddling, always late,
  a solitary wide-eyed boy
  dawdling by the fields edge
  on his slow saunter to school.

  Still bewildered by learning,
  a timid figure, gawping high
  beyond the trees and hedgerows,
  trying to read the fenland sky.

  That sudden shock of geese
  flying low over Glinton spire
  a noisy flock of letterforms,
  silhouettes folding and flapping.

  A garbled alphabet of wings
  above his tousled head,
  a formation of words in full flight,
  his first sight of poetry.

  In his autobiographical sketches John Clare recalled that as a child he watched wild geese scudding through the sky and saw in their formations ‘all the letters of the Alphabet’.

  He revisited the memory in the poem March, from his collection, The Shepherds Calender.

  He marks the figured forms in which they fly
  And pausing follows in a wondering eye
  Likening their curious march in curves and rows
  To every letter which his memory knows.

  Posy

  NOEL CONNOR

  Village children found them first
  budding on the narrow verge
  by the edge of the schoolyard,
  strange flowers, emerging
  shyly in the spring sunshine.
   
  One girl picked a tiny posy
  for her astonished teacher,
  left speechless at the sight,
  a splay of fine parchment petals
  riddled in lines of your poetry.

• Scraps

  NOEL CONNOR

  You called them scraps
  these flawed fragments, unfinished efforts
  captured on anything you had to hand,
  a tatter of torn labels or printed bills,
  splices of birch bark scrawled in spidery lines,
  old envelopes pieced and stitched
  as a crude notebook, creased wrapping
  hoarded for the hard days, the weeks
  when you couldn’t afford fine paper.

  Thin skinned testaments, bleeding through,
  a flurry of words written this way and that,
  corner to corner, covered back and front
  and slewing sideways down the margins.
  Penned in poor man’s homemade ink
  ground oak galls and green coppurs,
  a tannic concoction stewed in rainwater,
  its bitter cantankerous brew
  a recipe for disaster in years to come.

  Today I gently turn the pages
  of your humble archive,
  coded folders of acid free paper,
  expensive conservation tapes and tissue
  protecting these remnants of poems
  delicate as pressed harebells
  or wisps of dried sweet woodruff.
  This catalogue of waifs and strays,
  frayed oddments mottled and holed
  by hurtful ink, leaf bitten lines
  nibbled to the vein by pooties and caterpillars
  feeding on your wounded words.

  (on viewing the John Clare archive)

• Bird Whispers

  Liz Davies

  I walk under the willows, and
  My feet hardly touch the shadows,
  But my silent passing sets up
  From among the silver leaves
  A great whispering of frantic feathers.
  A whistling, panicked battle
  Of soft curved wings batters
  Against the cage of twigs and leaves,
  That gently hold the frightened bird,
  Slow the flight with slender tips,
  And a great pearly woodpigeon,
  Eyes bulging in delicate head on arching neck
  Fights free through the enveloping
  Tree and escapes into the sky.

  Liz Davies lives in Fenstanton

• Summer on the Fens

  LIZ DAVIES

  The alien patches of bright yellow fade once more
  Into English green, and the hedges, the wide trees
  Heave up lush to a dark Wedgwood sky, heavy
  With unfallen rain, swinging low, and white birds wade
  Through the thickly wet air. Old lace elderflowers,
  Hawthorn arching Hockney-deep in clotted cream,
  And wild light parsley floats in misty drifts
  Across the ridged green of the fields. Dark woods
  Set sail over the brow of the hill, with bow waves
  Of daisies before, willow leaves along the water
  Ripple, turning to silver in the breeze, and look -
  A whole ballet corps of chestnut flowers leaps up
  In arabesques, tutus flecked with pink and yellow,
  The River Great Ouse rises, imperceptibly slow,
  Adorned with blooming swans a-cruise on silver,
  Cataracts of pink roses pause in their plummet,
  Thick vegetation leans into the country roads,
  Almost obscuring our way, reminding us still
  That England ever belongs to the green, the roots,
  To the springs, the branch, the leaf and the flower.