Welcome to John Clare: Selected Poems (OCR AS Level English Literature - H072)
Welcome to your comprehensive revision guide for John Clare: Selected Poems. This text is studied under Section 2 (Poetry pre-1900) of Component 01: Shakespeare and poetry pre-1900 for the Cambridge OCR AS Level English Literature (H072) qualification.
Studying poetry from the 19th century might feel intimidating at first, but John Clare is one of the most immediate, passionate, and unique voices in English literature. Unlike many upper-class Romantic poets who observed nature from a distance, Clare lived and worked right inside it as an agricultural labourer. In these notes, we will break down his life, his core themes, his distinctive style, and key poems so that you can approach your closed-text exam with complete confidence.
What the Examiners are Looking For:
- AO1 (Articulate Responses & Concepts): Build a clear, well-structured argument using accurate literary terms.
- AO2 (Close Analysis): Analyse how Clare shapes meaning using language, imagery, form, meter, rhyme, and structure.
- AO3 (Contextual Understanding): Explore how historical, environmental, social, and biographical contexts shape the poetry.
1. Historical and Biographical Context (AO3)
To understand Clare's poetry, you need to understand the world he inhabited and the massive social upheavals of his lifetime.
A. The "Peasant Poet" Label and Social Background
John Clare (1793–1864) was born in the village of Helpston, Northamptonshire. His father, Parker Clare, was an illiterate farm labourer. Clare himself worked in the fields from a young age as a thresher, hedge-setter, and lime-burner.
When his first collection, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was published in 1820, his London publishers (Taylor & Hessey) marketed him as the "Northamptonshire Peasant Poet". While this label brought him brief fame and curiosity from wealthy patrons, it was deeply double-edged:
- It treated him as a rural novelty rather than a serious literary artist.
- Clare constantly resisted being patronised or forced to conform to polite, upper-class literary standards.
B. The Parliamentary Enclosure Acts: The Theft of the Commons
During Clare’s lifetime, the British government passed a series of Parliamentary Enclosure Acts. For centuries, rural England operated on an "open-field" system where villagers shared access to ancient common land, pastures, and fens to graze animals, gather firewood, and forage.
Enclosure completely transformed this landscape:
- Common land was carved up, enclosed with fences and hedges, and awarded to wealthy landowners as private property.
- Ancient trees were chopped down, paths were blocked, and wildlife habitats were cleared for profit.
- Poor labourers lost their independence and traditional rights, turning them into wage-dependent workers.
For Clare, enclosure was not just an economic change; it was a profound ecological and psychological trauma. He viewed it as an act of violent greed that destroyed local biodiversity, silenced communal customs, and severed his personal connection to the landscape.
C. Mental Health and Asylum Life
Throughout his adult life, Clare suffered from severe bouts of clinical depression, poverty, social alienation, and existential crisis. In 1837, he was admitted to High Beach private asylum in Epping Forest. In 1841, he escaped and famously walked 80 miles home to Northamptonshire, eating grass along the roadside to survive.
Later in 1841, he was committed to the Northampton General County Lunatic Asylum (St Andrew’s Hospital), where he spent the remaining 23 years of his life until his death in 1864. Remarkably, Clare continued to write hundreds of powerful "asylum poems" addressing isolation, loss of selfhood, and spiritual peace.
Key Takeaway for Section 1: Clare was an authentic working-class insider whose life was defined by the trauma of enclosure, poverty, and struggles with mental illness. Always integrate these historical facts directly into your literary analysis!
2. Clare’s Core Themes and Poetic Techniques (AO1 & AO2)
Don't worry if Clare’s style seems different from other Romantic poets like Wordsworth or Keats—it is supposed to be! Here is how Clare built his unique poetic voice.
A. "Ecological Democracy" vs. Romantic Egotism
While poets like William Wordsworth used nature as a backdrop for high philosophical meditation about human morality, Clare practiced what critics call ecological democracy:
- Clare gives equal status and agency to all living things—not just grand mountains, but humble creatures like badgers, yellowhammers, snipes, hedgehogs, and even weeds.
- Nature has its own value and right to exist, completely independent of whether humans are watching.
- His observations are precise and photographic: he captures the exact construction of a bird's nest or the twitch of an animal under threat.
B. Dialect as Resistance and Aesthetic Choice
Clare deliberately used his local Northamptonshire dialect in his poetry (for example, words like chumbling, crunkle, grizzle, swail, and pooting).
- Examiner Warning: Never call Clare’s dialect or grammar "uneducated errors"!
- Clare famously wrote: "grammer in learning is like prisons in society."
- Just as landowners built fences to enclose the open countryside, Clare felt standard London grammar rules placed artificial "fences" around human speech and natural expression. His regional language was a deliberate act of political and artistic integrity.
C. Elegiac Protest and Disorientation
Many of Clare's poems are elegies—poems of mourning and loss. But unlike traditional elegies that mourn a deceased person, Clare mourns the death of places, trees, and communal ways of life. When moved away from his native ground, he experienced intense psychological disorientation (a feeling of homelessness or "un-homing").
Memory Trick: Remember Clare's 3 D's:
1. Democracy: Giving voice and equal value to all living creatures.
2. Dialect: Using regional, non-standard language to resist literary enclosure.
3. Displacement: Expressing the grief and alienation caused by enclosure and asylum life.
3. Detailed Study of Key Representative Poems
Let’s examine how these themes and techniques operate in key set poems.
1. "I Am!" (1848)
Summary: Written during his long confinement in the Northampton General County Lunatic Asylum, this lyric poem is an agonizing yet beautiful exploration of existential isolation and identity.
Form & Structure: Three six-line stanzas (sestets) written in iambic pentameter with a steady ababcc rhyme scheme. The rigid structure provides an anchor against the chaos of his mental distress.
Key Techniques and Quotes:
- "I am—yet what I am none cares or knows": The opening asserts his existence ("I am") but immediately collapses into loneliness and alienation.
- "A silent vapour tost / Into the living sea of waking dreams": Metaphors of insubstantiality and drowning capture the feeling of mental dissociation.
- "Untroubling and untroubled where I lie; / The grass below—above the vaulted sky": The final stanza longs for a return to a peaceful, unpeopled, pre-Edenic state where he can sleep as in childhood.
2. "Badger"
Summary: A vivid, unflinching narrative describing the cruel rural practice of badger-baiting, where a wild badger is dug out of its sett and chased through the village by men and dogs.
Key Techniques:
- Sympathetic Perspective: Clare presents the badger as a courageous fighter defending its home against overwhelming, brutal odds ("He turns upon his foes and tries to fight").
- Critique of Human Cruelty: Clare exposes the casual violence of the village crowd, showing that humans, not wild animals, are the true brutes.
- Realistic Action: Uses dynamic verbs and rhythmic momentum to immerse the reader in the chaotic, violent struggle.
3. "The Fallen Elm" and "Remembrances"
Summary: Powerful protest elegies lamenting the violent impact of the Enclosure Acts on the landscape and rural working class.
Key Techniques:
- Personification: In The Fallen Elm, the felled tree is treated as an ancient friend and silent companion destroyed by utilitarian greed and modern property boundaries.
- Direct Political Critique: In Remembrances, Clare explicitly states that "inclosure came and trample[d] on the grave / Of labour's rights and left the poor a slave."
- Sensory Nostalgia: Contrasts vivid, joyful sensory memories of boyhood freedom with the cold, fenced-off reality of the present.
4. "The Thrush’s Nest" / "The Yellowhammer’s Nest"
Summary: Exquisite sonnets that capture the intimate, hidden lives of birds and their nesting architecture.
Key Techniques:
- Micro-Observation: Clare provides an almost microscopic inventory of materials (moss, twigs, horsehair, feathers) and the delicate appearance of the eggs.
- Non-Intrusive Gaze: The human observer does not disturb or conquer the nest; instead, the poet watches quietly, honouring the sanctuary of maternal nature.
5. "The Flitting"
Summary: Written after Clare moved just three miles from his birthplace in Helpston to Northborough in 1832.
Key Techniques:
- Psychological Displacement: Demonstrates that even a short physical move can feel like complete exile when a poet’s identity and inspiration are rooted in specific soil and trees.
- The Survival of Poetry: Clare reflects on how nature and true poetic voice outlive transient human ownership and boundary stones.
Key Takeaway for Section 3: Notice the dual nature of Clare's collection: intensely tender celebrations of natural micro-worlds sitting right beside biting social anger and profound existential grief.
4. Common Exam Pitfalls & How to Avoid Them
Make sure you don't lose easy marks by making these common examiner-flagged mistakes:
Pitfall 1: Treating Clare as Just Another Wordsworth
- The Mistake: Writing that Clare "loves nature just like William Wordsworth."
- How to Fix It: Highlight their differences! Wordsworth approaches nature from an intellectual, philosophical distance as an educated gentleman. Clare writes from the inside as a labourer who worked the earth, granting nature autonomy rather than making it a mirror for the human ego.
Pitfall 2: "Context Bolting" (Separating AO3 from AO2)
- The Mistake: Writing an entire paragraph about the Enclosure Acts or Clare's asylum stay without quoting or analysing the poem.
- How to Fix It: Always braid context directly into your close reading. For example: "Clare's description of the tree's felling reflects the violent disruption of the Enclosure Acts, as the harsh verb 'trampled' emphasizes how privatised property destroyed communal agrarian life."
Pitfall 3: Reading Clare as an Idyllic "Merry England" Poet
- The Mistake: Assuming Clare only writes gentle, pretty poems about flowers and sunshine.
- How to Fix It: Acknowledge the harsh realities in his poems—badger baiting, freezing winter conditions, rural poverty, starvation, and psychological torment.
5. Quick Review & Essay Checklist
Before entering your AS Level examination, test yourself against this quick checklist:
Core Checklist:
- Can you explain why Clare resisted standard punctuation and celebrated Northamptonshire dialect?
- Can you explain the social and environmental consequences of the Parliamentary Enclosure Acts?
- Can you contrast Clare's "ecological democracy" with mainstream High Romanticism?
- Do you have a bank of short, versatile quotations memorised from key poems such as "I Am!", "Badger", "The Fallen Elm", and "Remembrances"?
- Are your contextual points (AO3) strictly linked to your analysis of form, language, and meter (AO2)?
You've got this! Approach John Clare's poetry as a powerful, living protest against the loss of the natural world and human freedom, and you will produce rich, high-scoring essays.