Approach to Murano
Published on 25. March 1993
Book
Paperback/Softback
64 pages
978-1-85224-192-6 (ISBN)
Description
Kenneth Allsop called Jack Clemo 'the John Bunyan of the century'. Born in 1916, the son of a clay-kiln worker, he became a mystic recluse, living in poverty amidst the bleak, clay wastelands of Cornwall. He was also stone deaf, and after writing two visionary novels and his autobiographical Confession of a Rebel, he lost his sight in 1955. His Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1988) shows the development of his poetry from the puritanical isolationism of his early anti-nature, anti-church poems, to his later, mellower outlook.
Years after becoming blind and deaf, Jack Clemo met his wife Ruth, whom he married in 1968. This new collection includes the last poems he composed amid the Cornish clay-tips before they moved to Dorset in 1984, but most of the poems were written in Weymouth.
Jack Clemo writes: 'The geographical change was related to a spiritual and emotional shift away from cramped and austere concepts of truth, and the double movement made me receptive during visits to other parts of Britain and, even more significantly, to Venice, whose glass-producing centre, the island of Murano, became a symbol of the clear-cut, luminous image, contrasting with my bleared and heavy clay idiom.'
Years after becoming blind and deaf, Jack Clemo met his wife Ruth, whom he married in 1968. This new collection includes the last poems he composed amid the Cornish clay-tips before they moved to Dorset in 1984, but most of the poems were written in Weymouth.
Jack Clemo writes: 'The geographical change was related to a spiritual and emotional shift away from cramped and austere concepts of truth, and the double movement made me receptive during visits to other parts of Britain and, even more significantly, to Venice, whose glass-producing centre, the island of Murano, became a symbol of the clear-cut, luminous image, contrasting with my bleared and heavy clay idiom.'
Reviews / Votes
The poems written since his "creed-embedded marriage" have greater humanity, a more acceptable theology, more tenderness and control and beauty of form. -- Norman Nicholson His visual sense and music ear would be remarkable in any poet... We can truly call him a visionary poet -- Elizabeth JenningsMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 138 mm
Weight
113 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-85224-192-6 (9781852241926)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Jack Clemo was born in 1916 near St Austell, Cornwall. Son of a clay-kiln worker, he received only a village school education, but devoted himself entirely to writing throughout a restless adolescence. He remained a mystical recluse during his twenties, living in poverty with his widowed mother. By 1955 he had become deaf and blind.
His first published novel, Wilding Graft, won an Atlantic Award in Literature from Birmingham University in 1948. An allegorical novel, The Shadowed Bed, which he wrote soon afterwards, was eventually published in 1986 by Lion Publishing. He wrote two volumes of autobiography, Confession of a Rebel (1949) and Marriage of a Rebel (1980), both recently reissued in paperback by Hodder, and a record of personal faith, The Invading Gospel (1958), reissued by Lakeland Books in 1972 and by Marshall and Pickering in 1986.
His ?rst collection of poems, The Clay Verge, appeared in 1951, and was incorporated in a larger volume, The Map of Clay, ten years later. The Wintry Priesthood, a sequence which won an Arts Council Festival of Britain poetry prize in 1951, was also printed in The Map of Clay. Four other collections of poetry followed: Cactus on Carmel (1967), The Echoing Tip (1971), Broad Autumn (1975) and A Different Drummer (1986). His Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1988) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. This was followed by two further collections from Bloodaxe, Approach to Murano in 1993, and The Cured Arno, published posthumously in 1995. He published two books with Cornish imprints, The Bouncing Hills, humorous dialect stories and light verse (Truran Publications, Redruth, 1983), and Banner Poems, local descriptive pieces (Cornish Nationalist Publications, 1989). Clay Cuts, an illustrated limited edition of early clay-image poems, was published by Previous Parrot Press, Oxford, in 1992.
He was awarded a Civil List pension in 1961, and an honorary D.Litt degree from Exeter University in 1981. He married his wife Ruth in 1968, and in 1984 they left Cornwall to settle in her home town of Weymouth in Dorset. Their courtship and marriage was the subject of a biography, Clemo: A Love Story by Sally Magnusson (Lion Publishing, 1986). Jack Clemo died in 1994.
His first published novel, Wilding Graft, won an Atlantic Award in Literature from Birmingham University in 1948. An allegorical novel, The Shadowed Bed, which he wrote soon afterwards, was eventually published in 1986 by Lion Publishing. He wrote two volumes of autobiography, Confession of a Rebel (1949) and Marriage of a Rebel (1980), both recently reissued in paperback by Hodder, and a record of personal faith, The Invading Gospel (1958), reissued by Lakeland Books in 1972 and by Marshall and Pickering in 1986.
His ?rst collection of poems, The Clay Verge, appeared in 1951, and was incorporated in a larger volume, The Map of Clay, ten years later. The Wintry Priesthood, a sequence which won an Arts Council Festival of Britain poetry prize in 1951, was also printed in The Map of Clay. Four other collections of poetry followed: Cactus on Carmel (1967), The Echoing Tip (1971), Broad Autumn (1975) and A Different Drummer (1986). His Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1988) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. This was followed by two further collections from Bloodaxe, Approach to Murano in 1993, and The Cured Arno, published posthumously in 1995. He published two books with Cornish imprints, The Bouncing Hills, humorous dialect stories and light verse (Truran Publications, Redruth, 1983), and Banner Poems, local descriptive pieces (Cornish Nationalist Publications, 1989). Clay Cuts, an illustrated limited edition of early clay-image poems, was published by Previous Parrot Press, Oxford, in 1992.
He was awarded a Civil List pension in 1961, and an honorary D.Litt degree from Exeter University in 1981. He married his wife Ruth in 1968, and in 1984 they left Cornwall to settle in her home town of Weymouth in Dorset. Their courtship and marriage was the subject of a biography, Clemo: A Love Story by Sally Magnusson (Lion Publishing, 1986). Jack Clemo died in 1994.