Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Robert Stephen Hawker
Thomas Edwards Hankinson
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
In the rugged landscape of Victorian Cornwall, where granite cliffs meet the tempestuous Atlantic and ancient legends whisper through the mist, there lived a man whose life embodied the very essence of romantic poetry. Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875) was not merely a poet who happened to be a clergyman, nor simply a priest who dabbled in verse. He was a singular figure whose eccentric personality, passionate dedica…
“What a life mine would be if it were all written and published in a book.”
Thomas Edwards Hankinson was born at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, on 19 June 1805, and died at Stainley Hall near Ripon, Yorkshire, on 6 October 1843. His short life coincided with a period of exceptional change in British religious, literary, and social history: the final decades of the Romantic movement, the Reform crisis, the growth of evangelical and missionary culture, and the opening of the Victorian age. He was neith…
About 395 km separate Plymouth, Devon, England from St Germans, Norfolk, England. Both have ground in England.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Robert Stephen Hawker: cornwall, morwenstow, charlotte i'ans, newdigate prize, pompeii, tendrils, records of the western shore, ecclesia. Thomas Edwards Hankinson: king's lynn, norfolk, stainley hall, ripon, seatonian prize, sacred poems, david playing the harp before saul, the plague stayed.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Notable events from the years they were both alive.
Robert Stephen Hawker: Spirituality, Wonder, Fear. Thomas Edwards Hankinson: Longing, Tenderness, Joy.
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