Afternoon Talk (2) : Following in the footsteps of John Clare (E10), Saturday 6th November 2021, 5-6 PM
With Robert Selby, Pam Thompson and Robert Hamberger. This event was hosted by Kathy Pimlott.
The event opens with a reading by Robert Selby of his recent debut collection of Suffolk-inspired poems. This is followed by exploration of Robert Hamberger’s re-tracing of John Clare's 1841 walk home from Epping Forest to Werrington, near Peterborough. In interview with the Leicester-based poet, Pam Thompson, Hamberger discusses the research and writing of the book and reads from his memoir of that walk: A Length of Road: Finding myself in the footsteps of John Clare. He reads extracts from the prose account of his walk (undertaken in 1995, six weeks after he separated from his wife) and extracts from Clare's journal to highlight differences and similarities between the two walks. He and Pam Thompson read poems in the voices of Clare and those he met on his walk, and examine the issue of genre-fluid writing using Clare's 1830s sonnet Trespass as a way into examining the continuing dilemmas for working class writers.
