Jack Clemo
Encyclopedia
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
and his strong Christian belief. His work was considered to be visionary and inspired by the rugged Cornish landscape. He was the son of a clay-kiln worker, and his mother, Eveline Clemo (née Polmounter, died 1977), was a dogmatic nonconformist.
Early life
Clemo was born in the parish of St Stephen-in-BrannelSt Stephen-in-Brannel
St Stephen-in-Brannel is a civil parish and village in central Cornwall, United Kingdom. St Stephen village is four miles west of St Austell on the southern edge of Cornwall's china clay district.In medieval times the parish lay within the royal manor of Brannel...
near St Austell
St Austell
St Austell is a civil parish and a major town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated on the south coast approximately ten miles south of Bodmin and 30 miles west of the border with Devon at Saltash...
. His father was killed at sea towards the end of the First World War and he was raised by his mother who exerted a dominant influence on him. He was educated at the village school but after age of 13 his formal schooling ceased with the onset on his blindness. He became deaf around age 20, and blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
in 1955, about 19 years later. The china clay mines and works around which he grew up were to feature strongly in his work.
Literary career
Clemo's early work was published in the local press but his literary breakthrough came with the novel Wilding Graft, which was published by Chatto and WindusChatto and Windus
Chatto & Windus has been, since 1987, an imprint of Random House, publishers. It was originally an important publisher of books in London, founded in the Victorian era....
in 1948 winning an Atlantic Award. This was followed in 1949 by his autobiography, Confessions of a Rebel, which established Clemo as a remarkable and original writer. Clemo developed further as a writer and in 1951 he published his first collection, The Clay Verge. Set in a stark landscape, the poems explore the forces of nature and the workings of a hard-won grace. He received national recognition for the first time in the same year during the Festival of Britain
Festival of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition in Britain in the summer of 1951. It was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote good quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival's centrepiece was in...
where he was awarded a literary prize.
In 1970 he was appointed a Bard of the Gorseth Kernow
Gorseth Kernow
Gorseth Kernow is a non-political Cornish organisation, which exists to maintain the national Celtic spirit of Cornwall in the United Kingdom.-History:...
and conferred with the title Poet of the Clay. In 1981, at the age of 65, he received an honorary literary doctorate from the University of Exeter
University of Exeter
The University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....
.
Marriage
Clemo was deeply religious and believed it was God's will for him to marry. However it was not until he reached his early 50s when he met and subsequently married Ruth Peaty in 1968, who came from Weymouth. Following his marriage in 1968 he was able to discover a lighter side to life and poetry. His love for Ruth, both expressed through his poetry and his mischievous wit, are encapsulated in the little romantic cards he composed each year for her.Public recognition
By the age of 65 he had achieved sufficient recognition for a dramatised version of his biography, directed by Norman StoneNorman Stone
Norman Stone is a British academic, historian, author and is currently a Professor in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara...
, to be produced and screened by the BBC in 1981. No tapes of this programme have survived. A few years later a biography of Jack Clemo was written by Sally Magnusson
Sally Magnusson
Sally Magnússon,, is a Scottish broadcaster and writer, currently working for BBC Scotland. She also presents Tracing Your Roots on BBC Radio 4.-Early life:...
. His portrait was also painted by Tricia Porter in 1975 and is displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Italian sojourn
An unexpected change to his writing occurred after two trips to Italy late in his life. In 1987 he visited Venice and then 6 years later he travelled to FlorenceFlorence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. This seemed to prompt a blaze of more colourful verse, integrating the personal drama of his own life with the sweep of Italian faith, landscape and history. In ‘Heretic in Florence’ he recounted the stench of the dry river Arno and its cure, portraying it as a metaphor for his own release from merely barren art.
Death and legacy
Clemo died, aged 78, in Weymouth on July 25, 1994.There is a small museum located in a dedicated Memorial Room at Trethosa Chapel, where he was both christened and married, featuring his life and works and which is run by volunteers. His literary papers, including manuscripts of prose and poetry works, are held by the University of Exeter
University of Exeter
The University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....
.
An annual Jack Clemo Poetry Competition was established in 1995 by
Arts Centre Group (ACG) having received a legacy from Jack Clemo's estate. The first winner was Ulster English teacher and poet Ray Givans and the prize was £30 and a sculpture by ACG member Iain Cotton in Cornish stone with a Celtic design (the sculpture to be held for one year). The winning poem was called Work Ethic.
Posthumous controversy
The former Cornish home of Jack Clemo was demolished by the Goonvean China Clay Company on 6 September 2005 to make way for new laboratories. This provoked much anger both locally and from fans of the poet, who had lived most of his life at the cottage except for his last 10 years after having moved to Weymouth in 1984.Dr Philip Payton, director of the Institute of Cornish Studies in Truro, said he would like to see the cottage as a museum. "You cannot think about Jack Clemo without thinking about the china clay country. And you cannot think about the china clay country in any serious sense without pondering about Jack Clemo. To obliterate the cottage would be to erase [Clemo] from the landscape of Cornwall. He is hugely important in a Cornish context and also as an international poet. He is one of the greats. There is something about Jack Clemo's cottage that says so much about him as a person. It is so humble and in such a bleak place and it speaks volumes about his disabilities and achievements."
Alan Sanders, secretary of the Jack Clemo Memorial Room at Trevosa Chapel, said: "On a personal and literary level this cottage was highly important. I have known this cottage all my life so I am deeply saddened. A lot of people are still keen on Jack's work and will be very disappointed."
Mr Sanders said the company had ignored requests to keep the cottage although he accepted it was within its rights and had broken no planning rules in demolishing the cottage. A scale model of the cottage has subsequently been created and can be seen in the Trevosa Chapel museum.
Poetry
- The Clay Verge (1951)
- The Map of Clay(1961)
- Cactus on Carmel (1967)
- The Echoing Tip (1971)
- Broad Autumn (1975)
- The Marriage of a Rebel (1988) ISBN 0-340-48895-6
- Selected Poems (1988) ISBN 1-85224-052-0
- Approach to Murano (1993, Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, who is still editor and managing director. Joined in 1982 by chairman Simon Thirsk, Astley was later awarded an honorary D.Litt by Newcastle University in 1995...
) - The Cured Arno (1995, Bloodaxe BooksBloodaxe BooksBloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specialising in poetry.-History:It was founded in 1978 in Newcastle upon Tyne by Neil Astley, who is still editor and managing director. Joined in 1982 by chairman Simon Thirsk, Astley was later awarded an honorary D.Litt by Newcastle University in 1995...
) - The Awakening – Poems Newly Found (edited by John Hurst, Alan M. Kent and Andrew C. Symons)
Novels
- Wilding Graft (1948) ISBN 0-907746-17-9
- The Shadowed Bed
- The Clay Kiln ISBN 1-900147-20-3
Non-fiction
- Confession of a Rebel (1949) autobiography
- The Invading Gospel (1958) theology