Books & Music
Love’s Cold Returning – John Clare’s 1841 Odyssey from Essex to Northamptonshire
By Ellis Hall and Bridget Somekh
In July 1841, John Clare escaped Matthew Allen’s lunatic asylum in Epping Forest and embarked on a four-day journey to find his adored wife and muse Mary Joyce. Lamed by a broken shoe, and carrying no money or provisions, he endured great hardship to be reunited with her. But Mary had died three years earlier, a spinster. Clare was toiling home to a truth he would struggle to accept—that his cherished memory of their marriage was a delusion. His account of the 85-mile trek to find her, known as ‘The Journey out of Essex’, is by turns lucid and incoherent, prosaic and poetic. Using it as a guide, the authors investigate the landscapes through which he walked, shedding new light on his journey and the world in which it took place, and seeking out the remains of that world in the twenty-first century.
“This lively narrative, punctuated by maps, drawings and Hall’s high-quality photographs, is pitched somewhere between travelogue and detective novel…Readers will learn an enormous amount, and Clare enthusiasts will appreciate the equal measures of passion and factual precision that Hall and Somekh pour into their hybrid, multifaceted book.” - TLS
Available from Thirteen Eighty One Press:
https://thirteeneightyone.co.uk/loves-cold-returning/
or from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Loves-Cold-Returning-Odyssey-Northamptonshire/dp/0992607310/
Roger Arborfield - Chapbook Series and other publications
A Length of Road - Robert Hamberger
In 1841 the ‘peasant poet’ John Clare escaped from an asylum in Epping Forest, where he had been kept for four years, and walked over eighty miles home to Northamptonshire. In 1995, with his life in crisis, Robert decided to retrace Clare’s route along the Great North Road over a punishing four day walk. A Length of Road is a profound and poetic exploration of class, gender, grief and sexuality through the author’s own experiences and the autobiographical writing of John Clare.
Available from:
https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/robert-hamberger/a-length-of-road/9781473697942/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Length-Road-Robert-Hamberger/dp/147369793X
Jim Ghedi - A Sprig of Yarrow
This is a small and beautiful book of Jim's poetry, a heartfelt series of poems, recounting his life and experiences of home and all that was going on around him.
Jim Ghedi - 'The Lamentations of Round Oak Waters'
From his 2021 album 'In the Furrows of Common Place'
Available at:
A MEETING OF TWO SPIRITS by John Lincoln
Published in late January 2023 the book is a showcase of drawings and paintings produced over the last 35 years. They are the result of my reading the poetry and prose of the poet John Clare and walking much of the countryside he knew, intimately. Jonathan Bates, in his biography of Clare wrote that he was –‘England’s greatest nature poet’.
I have visited many of the places that Clare knew and recorded in his prose and poetry, often in words of such sublime reality as to enable the reader to be there and know what Clare felt as he crouched down to view the drop of water collected at the point of a grass spear or gaze on the advancing storm clouds over the fens.
The drawings, and paintings are both a direct and sometimes indirect reflection of my many virtual meetings with Clare by way of his poetry and prose and the places he knew and wrote about and my own response to them. The combined text and artworks are an example of how the words of a nineteenth century poet, derived from an acute sense of place, can be a source of inspiration for a 20th/21st century visual artist who feels empowered to respond creatively to both the words and the place.
Description
A hardback book, (size: 269mm x 238mm), with dust cover, containing around 18,000 words explaining the background and rationale for the images comprising 10 b/w photographs of Clare places; 16 pen and ink drawings and 120 full colour reproductions of paintings. (See examples of pages below).
The book is designed by Adrian Lincoln, with a Foreword by Tim Chilcott. Tim has published widely on Clare and Romanticism, including 'A real world & doubting mind': a Critical Study of the Poetry of John Clare (University of Hull Press, 1985).
The book is privately printed and priced at £30, inc P&P in the UK. If you have any questions about the book or how to purchase it, please contact me via direct message in the Facebook Messenger function or contact me at john.lincoln@art-insight.co.uk
1. The hanging vines of Southey Wood
Acrylic, finished in oil on canvas - 76 x 101 cms – 2011
These invasive vines seem to be growing only on one tree in Southey Wood, giving an almost tropical appearance to this part of the Wood, hence the colouration.
2. Pickworth Arch
Pen & ink on paper - 25 x 30 cms - 1996
The place were we dug the kiln was full of foundations and human bones. We was about a stones throw from the spot were the church had been which was entirely swept away excepting a curious pointed arch...
(BH p92)
3. In Southey Wood
Oil on canvas - 51 x 41 cms - 2014
I have seen two one in southey wood where it lapt its nether end or tail round a bit
of rotten stick.... (PW p77)
Southey Wood was one of the many woods around Helpston that Clare visited when looking for plants, birds and other animals, including ferns and where he records seeing a viper.
4. Teazels at Swaddywell
Fibre-tip pen and acrylic on paper - 58 x 38 cms - 2015
E'en the dew is parched up
From the teazle's jointed cup
O poor birds where must ye flye Now your water pots are dry
'Noon' (EP i p406)