"I Am"

Hail, humble Helpstone ... Where dawning genius never met the day, Where useless ignorance slumbers life away Unknown nor heeded, where low genius tries Above the vulgar and the vain to rise. -from "Helpstone" "I Am" The Selected Poetry of John Clare is the first anthology of the great "peasant poet"'s remarkable verse that makes available the full range of his accomplishments.

Here are the different Clares that have beguiled readers for two centuries the tender chronicler of nature and childhood; the champion of folkways in the face of oppression; the passionate, sweet-tongued love-poet; and the lonely visionary confined, in old age and senility, to asylums.

Clare (1793-1864) lived all his life in rural Northamptonshire. He is widely celebrated as one of England's great nature and folklife writers. Jonathan Bate is the author of Shakespeare and Ovid (1993) and The Genius of Shakespeare (1997).

He is Leverhulme Research Professor and King Alfred Professor of English at the University of Warwick.