The Poetry of John Clare

The Everyman selection of John Clare poems is a practical starting point to this major poet’s work. Angela Topping offers a comprehensive companion to R.K. Thornton’s choices, adding more for good measure. Clare is a major Romantic poet who has a great deal to communicate about contemporary issues like the enclosures, as well as a fine eye for detail and a mastery of form. He is very far from being the ‘peasant poet’ of his first introduction to literary society. Topping weaves in biographical and historical detail to illuminate the poems, but most of all, she analyses them to illustrate Clare’s originality, dialect, and metaphorical and phonological skill.

About the author:

Angela Topping is a widely published, prize-winning poet. She has seven collections and four chapbooks from a range of reputable publishers. She has a background in education and currently works freelance, leading workshops for students and teachers on writing and appreciating poetry. She is a senior moderator for one of the major public examination boards and the co-author of several text books. In 2013, she was Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden. This is her third Focus book.

136  pages

ISBN: 978-1-906075-48-4