STARS is the theme for 2012, National Poetry Day, "Tasteful illumination of the night, Bright scatter'd, twinkling star of spangled earth!" John Clare, 1820

STARS is the theme for 2012’s National Poetry Day


John Clare Close Oakham


"Tasteful illumination of the night, Bright scatter'd, twinkling star of spangled earth!"

John Clare 1820

Twinkle twinkle little star
How I wonder what you are*

From our earliest days, the poetry of stars surrounds us. We look at the stars and see stories in the constellations, our scientific selves boggle at the concept of interstellar travel and we steal the stars’ metaphorical power to name our cultural heroes.  How to express this wonder, if not in poems?

STARS is the theme for 2012’s National Poetry Day, and we’ll be celebrating on Thursday October 4th.

To kick off a week of poetry celebrations, the Forward Arts Foundation hosted the award ceremony for the Forward Prizes for Poetry in London on Monday 1st October. Click here for poems from the shortlists and the winners.

It’s a day for poetry readings, events, competitions, quizzes, exhibitions, commissions, creations, recitations and more, all planned and launched by the poets and poetry lovers of the UK. Find NPD on Facebook, follow theTweets for updates and announcements.

If you're planning a National Poetry Day event, please list it via our 'Add Your Event' page - thousands of people see our listings. It’s free and easy to use, and you can include details of any poetry event happening from now to November.

National Poetry Day is part of the Forward Arts Foundation family of poetry events, with Winning Words and the Forward Prizes for Poetry. We aim to make poetry a part of everybody's life, every day. Use this site to help you plan and publicise your National Poetry Day celebrations with resources including lesson plans, event suggestions, a listings service and updates from poetry bloggers and activists.

* Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was first published as a poem by Jane Taylor in Rhymes for the Nursery in London in 1806.

John Clare Pickworth Rutland

Pickworth in the county of Rutland

In the 13th century Pickworth was quite a substantial village, but by the end of the 14th century it was almost non-existent. It now comprises a small church, a disused Methodist chapel, a few large houses and a couple of rows of terraced and council houses,

At the southern boundary of the village is a crossroads leading to Great Casterton about three miles to the south, the A1 road at Tickencote Warren to the west, Lincolnshire Gate and Castle Bytham to the north and an unmaintained track to Ryhall Heath to the east.

The current church, All Saints, was built in 1821 and lies to the west of the village. Maps previously showed the spire of the demolished church under the name Mockbeggar to the west of the current village site.

The remains of the old medieval village lie mainly to the west of the current village centre in an area referred to as Top Pickworth. The only visible remains, other than earthworks, is a stone arch.

Just to the west of the village lie the remains of a lime kiln. In 1817 this was the workplace of local poet John Clare. About two miles south-east is Walk Farm, formerly known as Walkherd Lodge, which was the home of Martha "Patty" Turner, who became John Clare's wife. Both the lime kiln and Walk Farm featured in a television documentary that was made about the poet in the late 1960s.

About two miles to the west of the village is the site of the Battle of Losecote Field in 1470. It has been claimed that the village was depopulated as a result of the fighting.

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I Am
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,

My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes,

They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;

And yet I am! and live with shadows tost



Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,

But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--

Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.



I long for scenes where man has never trod;

A place where woman never smil'd or wept;

There to abide with my creator, God,

And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:

Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;

The grass below--above the vaulted sky.



John Clare


John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet, born the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption. His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is often now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets. His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Clare

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