At our October meeting,\u00a0 more than 40 members heard Gary Alderson from Helpston, a few miles east of Stamford, give a talk about \u201cJohn Clare, the Peasant Poet\u201d.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Born in remote countryside at Helpston as a twin in 1793, he was the weakling yet his sister, Bessie, died young to John\u2019s lifelong sadness.\u00a0 The house where he grew up is now a museum in his memory.\u00a0 His mother was illiterate but his father had some schooling and John seems to have been an intelligent person.\u00a0 He worked in the local fields but was an inadequate labourer due to lack of height and strength and changed to being a limestone burner producing quicklime.\u00a0 Aged 13 years he heard his first poem which was about springtime which thrilled him and he started to write poems celebrating the beauty of the natural world with detailed descriptions of flora and fauna, and a keen awareness of the rhythms of the seasons.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was a ladies\u2019 man and liked wild living and, while a limestone burner, he fell in love with Martha who he called Patty.\u00a0 He had no money and his parents were poor and, in an attempt to print his poetry, he ran up a fifteen shillings bill at the local bookshop.\u00a0 However, the wealthy owner of a nearby mansion liked his poetry and paid the bill.\u00a0 His first poem was published in 1819 about the changing rural landscape and showed a deep connection to nature.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
His poetry was mainly read by the middle and upper classes and many of the nobility liked his dialect and chipped in to pay for more.\u00a0 In March 1820 he married Patty and they had nine children, of which two were stillbirths.\u00a0 Mental instability began to affect him by 1827, possibly induced by heavy drinking which was accidentally funded by allowances from his sponsors.\u00a0 Additionally, local enclosure began late, when he was 16, finishing in 1920.\u00a0 His poetry frequently lamented how enclosure destroyed the village’s traditional open landscape and restricted the community’s freedom to roam.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He started to have delusions and in 1837 he was locked in an asylum.\u00a0 His mood swings became more extreme and he was moved to Northampton asylum where he lived for the rest of his life.\u00a0 He was well looked after there, was allowed out to walk the countryside and still wrote good poetry.\u00a0 He died in 1864 and his body was brought back to be laid beside his parents.\u00a0 His work has undergone a revival in recent years because of his sensitive observations of the natural world and the attention he drew to loss of habitat and diversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At our October meeting,\u00a0 more than 40 members heard Gary Alderson from Helpston, a few miles east of Stamford, give a talk about \u201cJohn Clare, the Peasant Poet\u201d.\u00a0 Born in remote countryside at Helpston as a twin in 1793, he was the weakling yet his sister, Bessie, died young to John\u2019s lifelong sadness.\u00a0 The house where he grew up is now a museum in his memory.\u00a0 His mother was illiterate but his father had some schooling and John seems to have been an intelligent person.\u00a0 He worked in the local fields but was an inadequate labourer due to lack of height and strength and changed to being a limestone burner producing quicklime.\u00a0 Aged 13 years he heard his first poem which was about springtime which thrilled him and he started to write poems celebrating the beauty of the natural world with detailed descriptions of flora and fauna, and a keen awareness of the rhythms of the seasons.\u00a0 He was a ladies\u2019 man and liked wild living and, while a limestone burner, he fell in love with Martha who he called Patty.\u00a0 He had no money and his parents were poor and, in an attempt to print his poetry, he ran up a fifteen shillings bill at the local bookshop.\u00a0 However, the wealthy owner of a nearby mansion liked his poetry and paid the bill.\u00a0 His first poem was published in 1819 about the changing rural landscape and showed a deep connection to nature.\u00a0 His poetry was mainly read by the middle and upper classes and many of the nobility liked his dialect and chipped in to pay for more.\u00a0 In March 1820 he married Patty and they had nine children, of which two were stillbirths.\u00a0 Mental instability began to affect him by 1827, possibly induced by heavy drinking which was accidentally funded by allowances from his sponsors.\u00a0 Additionally, local enclosure began late, when he was 16, finishing in 1920.\u00a0 His poetry frequently lamented how enclosure destroyed the village’s traditional open landscape and restricted the community’s freedom to roam.\u00a0 He started to have delusions and in 1837 he was locked in an asylum.\u00a0 His mood swings became more extreme and he was moved to Northampton asylum where he lived for the rest of his life.\u00a0 He was well looked after there, was allowed out to walk the countryside and still wrote good poetry.\u00a0 He died in 1864 and his body was brought back to be laid beside his parents.\u00a0 His work has undergone a revival in recent years because of his sensitive observations of the natural world and the attention he drew to loss of habitat and diversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Tb23-1Lu","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/joanna-kosinska-B6yDtYs2IgY-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1709&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6788"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6790,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6788\/revisions\/6790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.overvillage.co.uk\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}