Remembrances: John Clare

Giles Watson reads John Clare's 'Remembrances', one amongst a number of John Clare's poems which struck an environmentalist chord a few decades before Hopkins's 'Binsey Poplars' -- and unlike Hopkins, Clare was capable of a smouldering, righteous anger. 'Remembrances' is at once a poem about the joys of childhood, about the disillusionment of middle-age, and about the destruction of the common lands by the Enclosure Acts of the mid-nineteenth century. In Clare's youth, the land around his village of Helpston was divided in much the same way as it had been under the mediaeval manorial system: crops were rotated in a circular fashion around the village, and large tracts of land were held in common, and never went under the plough. The Enclosure Acts -- a bid for agricultural efficiency imposed from above -- divided the land into enclosures under the control of rich landlords. Hedgerows were planted overnight, ancient trees were felled, and streams diverted in order to conform with theoretical lines drawn on a map somewhere in London, and Clare's childhood world was destroyed. Clare's lyrical mastery is evident in the skill with which the scene shifts backwards and forwards between past and present, and in the rising crescendo of indignation which dominates the second half of the poem, the fulcrum of which is nothing more dramatic than the image of dead, trapped moles hanging from a barbed wire fence: a ghoulish gamekeeper's practice which is, alas, still not extinct in England today. His skill is all the more impressive for the fact that Clare's manuscript version is unpunctuated: Clare was required as a child labourer in the fields when they were learning punctuation at school, and he never required it in his poetry. The photographs illustrating my reading show the wonderful new sculpture outside John Clare's house in Helpston, and his grave in the churchyard.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• John Clare
• Remembrances
• Enclosure
• poem
• poetry
• Helpston

[arcanus121]

Another very illuminating recitation. You have a way of bringing the poems alive, speaking the rhythms and bringing out the musicality without overemphasis. I like the emotion and anger which sounds natural. It sounds as if you carry the meaning in your heart as a credo. Wonderful!

[GAIASDREAMER]

Thank you so much Giles. I agree HerAeolianHarp, keep them coming!!. I like it. x

[HerAeolianHarp]

Nice reading. Oh, do keep the John Clare coming. :) I have only one John Clare upload up at my channel. Wish I had more to share. I'm so heartened by his poetry, so saddened by his tragic end--all because of the cordoning off of nature, freedom to roam being everyone's birthright, and yet kept from him because of ugly industrialization....