The Shepherd's Calendar. - book reviews

Contemporary Review, Nov, 1993 by Rodney Aitchtey

For over six years Clare had to wrangle with the publishers about the content of these two books which finally appeared in 1827, as he wished, in a single volume, The Shepherd's Calendar with Village Stories and other Poems. As if to perpetuate the memory of Clare's unease, in 1964 to commemorate the century of his death, a new edition was published which excluded the Village Stories (Cottage Tales). So I feel that the least this appreciation can do to honour the bicentenary is to bring them both together again here.

One aspect of Clare's great importance as a poet of rural record is that he grew up to witness the Enclosure Acts, and their effects on country life in the Helpstone area of Northamptonshire, with the ending of village industries and the seeding of early banking. He was made thoroughly aware by his own direct experience during the most intense period of its implementation. It was at the time when perpetrators of offences, so called, against the newly enclosed common land which became property, were given either the death penalty or transportation. The Acts were rushed through in such a way as to establish a precedent, which was followed by many Acts over the past nearly decade and a half. Clare describes vividly day to day occurrences. For example, when recalling a fruitful hazel tree, he writes, 'I once got a half peck of nuts off its branches when a boy - the Inclosure has left it desolate its companions of oak and ash being gone'.

Clare's symbiosis with Nature took a savage beating in those early years of the earth being turned into a mercantile commodity. Edmund Blunden writing of Clare has suggested that only Blake approaches Clare's power to evoke people's emotions. And, like Blake. he felt himself powerless to stop the gathering momentum of the flow or forced change which he was witnessing, and which altered mankind's ecological relationship with the earth. (The advent of Deep Ecology with its philosophy and praxis heralds some hope for a reversion of loyalty.) To read The Shepherd's Calendar is to be literally transported by what is being described, month by month. It may give a clue to why Clare later become relatively unknown, if not purposefully ignored. (Carcanet are to be praised for their list of works by and about John Clare; among them being John Clare. The Journals, Essays, and the Journey from Essex, introduced and edited so wonderfully by Anne Tibble, to which I am indebted.)

The poetic fashion of his time made it difficult for Clare to persist in following his own idiosyncratic and ecological path. Thus, why he became mad becomes immediately more understandable, as long as we include his real love for Mary Joyce. They were separated when young by her father. In 1841, Clare escaped from what he called 'prison' in Essex, and walked the ninety-odd miles back to his home. His description of the journey is heart-rending. In his letter to her he said, '... I got here to Northborough last Friday night but not being able to see you and hear where you was I soon began to feel homeless at home...'. He signed his letter, 'Your affectionate Husband, John Clare'. But Mary Joyce had died alone unhappily three years before.

Clare's poetry (and prose) is immensely valuable for its purity of detailed country observation. We are enabled to share his intimate relationship with nature and her ways, and with the ways of people whom he brings alive in each of these books.

The Cottage Tales reminds us that Clare also saw the end of the great tradition of oral poetry by the travelling poets who had held villages in thrall. Clare may be counted among the last writers who drew much of his inspiration from material that the oral poets had used in their form of communication between districts. To read aloud, or listen to Clare's poetry is surely to understand the meaning of poetry as a shared experience.

The combination of both books takes a substantial step toward the hope that Clare's what he called 'natural' poetry will enable him at last to become rightfully placed among our great poets.