6,016 research outputs found
The Meeting: Reading and Writing through John Clare
No full textThis book is a testament to the continuing power of the poet John Clare (1793–1864) to inspire creativity in other artists. It is the product of a project launched at Oxford Brookes University in 2019, aimed at getting Clare to places and people he’d not quite reached before, to explore how and why he remains such an inspiration to creative artists of all kinds, and to celebrate 200 years since his first book Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery was published. Celebrated poets led John Clare poetry workshops in public libraries in four corners of England – Bradford, Manchester, London, and Peterborough – and the poems collected here are the product of those workshops. Funded by Arts Council England, the John Clare Society and Oxford Brookes University, our project and this book is a meeting of poems and poets, poems and song, poems, and performance
Flower Poems
No full textJohn Clare is now celebrated as English literature's most important poet of the natural world. Flower Poems contains poems which include detailed interactions with and descriptions of flowers. These floral poems cover topics such as childhood, love, faith, parenthood, old age, rambling, rural life, ecology and the environmental damage wrought upon nature by humanity. Clare's ecological conscience and intimacy with the natural world could not be more relevant or inspiring to our own environmentally-threatened time. Edited and with an Introduction, Glossary and Editorial Note by Simon Kövesi, this collection has been designed to make Clare's poetry as accessible as possible. It follows on directly from Kövesi's edition of Love Poems (1999)
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A study of John Clare in his historical and political context
No full textAs the title indicates, the basis of the thesis is to set John Clare’s life and work within the context of the social and political history of his time. It is a study that is long overdue. The manner in which topical and political matters were mediated to him and were reflected in his work are analysed. His introduction to the literary and social worlds of Stamford and London is evaluated, and the advantages and disadvantages of patronage assessed. The active and complex political culture of Stamford has been taken into account as this may have affected his later political statements and a growing awareness of his audience. His antagonism to enclosure and the social changes that it engendered are considered. Three major questions that arise from this are addressed. The two local newspapers that Clare is known to have read are used throughout. His correspondence with friends, colleagues and casual correspondents has provided valuable insights as have his poetry and prose writings. Research in the Northamptonshire Record Office has revealed important new information in the form of one book of Enclosure Commissioners’ Minutes dated 1809-14, the first five years of the enclosure of Helpstone, Clare’s native village
Five Questions: Simon Kövesi on John Clare: Nature, Criticism and History (interview with Matthew Sangster)
No full textSimon Kövesi has published widely on contemporary fiction (with a particular focus on the Scottish novelist James Kelman), on working-class literature and on the relationship between writing and the natural world. At the heart of his work, though, is his abiding interest in and love for John Clare, on whom he has published numerous essays and book chapters. He is the editor of the John Clare Society Journal and the co-editor (with Scott McEathron) of New Essays on John Clare: Poetry, Culture and Community (Cambridge University Press, 2015). He has recently led a high-profile campaign to highlight the threat posed to Clare’s archives by ongoing local authority cuts. His passion for Clare’s work has also led to his being one of the very few academics to have sparred with a straw bear on the silver screen. Below, we discuss his most recent monograph, John Clare: Nature, Criticism and History, which was published by Palgrave in September 2017
Progress and Distress on the Stratford Estate in Clare during the Eighteen Forties
No full textIn the late 1980s and early 1990s, the author acquired about 30,000 letters written mainly in the 1840s. These pertained to estates throughout Ireland managed by James Robert Stewart and Joseph Kincaid, hereafter denoted SK. Until the letters - called the SK correspondence in what follows - became the author’s property, they had not seen light of day since the 1840s. Addressed mainly to the SK office in Dublin, they were written mainly by landlords, tenants, the partners in SK, local agents, etc. After about 200 years in operation as a land agency, the firm in which members of the Stewart family were the principal partners - Messrs J. R. Stewart & Son(s) from the mid-1880s onwards -- ceased business in the mid-1980s. Since 1994 the author has been researching the SK correspondence of the 1840s. It gives many new insights into economic and social conditions in Ireland during the decade of the great famine, and into the operation of Ireland’s most important land agency during those years. It is intended ultimately to publish details on several of the estates managed by SK in book form. The proposed title is Landlords, Tenants, Famine: Business of an Irish Land Agency in the 1840s, a draft of which has now been completed. A majority of the letters in the larger study from which the present article is drawn are on themes some of which one might expect - rents, distraint (seizure of assets in lieu of rent) ; ‘voluntary’ surrender of land in return for ‘compensation’ upon peacefully quitting; formal ejectment (a matter of last resort on estates managed by SK); landlord-assisted emigration (on a scale much more extensive than most historians of Ireland in the 1840s appear to believe); petitions from tenants; complaints by tenants, both about other tenants and local agents; major works of improvement (on almost all of the estates managed by SK); applications by SK, on behalf of proprietors, for government loans to finance improvements; recommendations of agricultural advisers hired by SK, ete. Thus, most of the SK correspondence is about aspects of estate management. It seems, in the 1840s, that the only estate in Clare managed by SK was that of the elderly Col. Stratford. Although the files on the relatively small Stratford estate are much less extensive than those on some of the estates investigated in detail in the draft of Landlords, Tenants, Famine, they do refer to most of the core aspects of estate management mentioned above. But in the case of the Clare estate, the material on some of those themes is extremely thin.
Author interview: considering Emma Goldman with Professor Clare Hemmings
No full textWe speak to Professor Clare Hemmings about her new book, Considering Emma Goldman: Feminist Political Ambivalence and the Imaginative Archive (Duke UP, 2018), which examines Goldman’s significance as an anarchist activist and thinker to the past and present of feminist theories and activism. Hemmings shows that the contradictions and tensions within Goldman’s approach to race, gender and sexuality speak to unresolved questions that continue to shape feminist practices and politics today
John Clare and place
No full textThis chapter tackles issues of place in the self-presentation and critical reception of John Clare, and pursues it across a number of axes. The argument centres on the placing of Clare both socio-economically and ‘naturally’, and limitations exerted upon perceptions of his work. Interrogating criticism this chapter finds a pervasive awkwardness especially in relation to issues of class and labour. It assesses the contemporary ‘placing’ of Clare, and seemingly unavoidable insensitivities to labour and poverty in the history industry, place-naming, and polemical ecocriticism. It assesses the ways Clare represents place – in poverty, in buildings, in nature – and, drawing on Michel de Certeau, considers the tactics Clare uses to negotiate his place. It pursues trajectories to ‘un-place’ Clare: the flight of fame in Clare’s response to Byron; and the flight of an early poem in songbooks and beyond, across the nineteenth century
Flying Fruit Fly Circus Big Top, Moore Park (Sydney, Australia) [Performance Video Recording]
No full textDigital migration of VHS. Video type: performance. Venue type: Big Top. Venue name: Flying fruit Fly Circus Big Top. Date: 1992. Circus Oz archive notes: Moore Park, Benefit.Circus Oz video recording 1992 - Sydney, Australia - Flying Fruit Fly Circus Big Top, Moore Park.0:00:00-0:07:10 intro (Shirley Billing, Marianne Permezel, Geoff Toll, Simon Mitchell, Nicci Wilks, Lisa Small, Simon Yates, Pete Murphy, Rob Eastcott, Clare Thyssen) --- 0:07:10-0:13:32 Clown's entrance (Lisa Small, Neill Gladwin) --- 0:13:32-0:21:11 Pole (Simon Yates, Lisa Small, Nicci Wilks, Geoff Toll, Marianne Permezel, Antonella Casella, Michael Ling) --- 0:21:11-0:24:18 Audience Participation (Stephen Burton, Neill Gladwin) --- 0:24:18-0:29:09 tightwire (Michael Ling) --- 0:29:19-0:36:12 adagio (Antonella Casella, Chris Sleight) --- 0:36:12-0:37:45 Bike cross (Clare Thyssen, Neill Gladwin, Michael Ling) --- 0:37:45-0:48:05 Plates (Neill Gladwin, Lisa Small) --- 0:48:05-0:48:35 Bike Cross --- 0:48:35-0:52:58 web (Antonella Casella, Chris Sleight) --- 0:52:58-0:53:14 Bike cross (Michael Ling) --- 0:53:10-0:57:35 bells (Shirley Billing, Marianne Permezel, Pete Murphy, Lisa Small) --- 0:57:35-1:08:00 The Flying Burtons (Neill Gladwin, Lisa Small, Chris Sleight, Antonella Casella, Michael Ling, Simon Yates) --- 1:08:00-1:10:31 Elvis --- 1:10:31-1:19:21 slackwire (Simon Mitchell, Simon Yates) --- 1:19:21-1:21:50 song (Clare Thyssen) --- 1:21:50-1:28:33 roofwalk (Nicci Wilks, Shirley Billing, Marianne Permezel, Michael Ling, Neill Gladwin) --- 1:28:33-1:32:10 duelling accordions (Rob Eastcott, Shirley Billing) --- 1:32:10-1:39:30 Untitled (Neill Gladwin) --- 1:39:30-1:45:16 Long arms, long legs (Antonella Casella, Chris Sleight, Shirley Billing) --- 1:45:16-1:52:07 hoops (Stephen Burton, Simon Yates, Lisa Small, Michael Ling, Antonella Casella, Chris Sleight) --- 1:52:07-1:57:30 credits (Clare Gallagher, Clare Thyssen, Rob Eastcott, Pete Murphy, Simon Yates, Lisa Small, Nicci Wilks, Simon Mitchell, Marianne Permezel, Shirley Billing, Neill Gladwin, Michael Ling, Antonella Casella, Stephen Burton, Chris Sleight
John Hamilton Reynolds, John Clare and The London Magazine
No full textAn essay is presented on the police report "The Literary Police Office," by Edward Herbert, which was published in the "The London Magazine" in the February 1823 issue. The report outlined the arrest of literary people, including poet John Clare. The author stresses his concern on the relationship of Clare with English poet John Hamilton Reynolds. She emphasizes the role of Reynolds as a host to the magazine and as a formative influence on Clare's early career
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