Contemporary poetic responses to John Clare in the British Isles, 1966-present

Abstract

This study explores John Clare’s poetic reception in the British Isles from 1966 to the present, acknowledging that, since the publication of his first collection, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (1821), Clare’s work has existed in a matrix of poetic exchanges. Within such poetic exchanges (with, for example, Eliza Emmerson, and John Taylor), Clare’s work has generated diverse creative responses. Later twentieth-century poet-editors Arthur Symons and Edmund Blunden have contributed significantly to the twentieth-century revival of Clare. Their editions of Clare – Poems, by John Clare (1907) and Poems, Chiefly from Manuscript (1920), respectively – are driven by their own critical and creative conceptions of Clare, which recent work by Stephanie Kuduk Weiner has viewed in dynamic relationship.

Influenced by Kuduk Weiner’s methodology, this study argues that post-war critical conceptions of Clare are fundamentally shaped by poetic responses to Clare in the British Isles, given the editorial and critical influence these poets have necessarily exerted. In two parts, my thesis configures two principal streams within Clare’s reception history. In Part One, following Mina Gorji and Jonathan Bate, this thesis studies Seamus Heaney’s extensive creative and critical relationship with Clare. The study’s chronology commences with the publication of Heaney’s first collection, Death of a Naturalist (1966), which marks his seminal response to Clare grounded in the pastoral tradition and in traditional poetic form. It identifies recent examples of this stream of influence in Scotland, in the work of John Burnside and Kathleen Jamie, in the first chapter, and in England, in Paul Farley and James Fenton, in the second chapter. In Part Two, the thesis moves to Iain Sinclair’s contrasting “open-field” understanding of Clare, and positions Tom Raworth, Wendy Mulford within this stream of influence in the third chapter, along with Elizabeth-Jane Burnett and Maggie O’Sullivan in the fourth chapter.

Date of Award	2 Jul 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Sara Lodge (Supervisor) & Oliver Roy Hazzard (Supervisor)