William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street, Soho, London, into a city that was becoming the commercial, imperial, and intellectual center of Britain. He died seventy years later, on 12 August 1827, in a modest room south of the Thames, leaving behind work that had attracted only a small and sometimes bewildered audience during his lifetime. Yet Blake would eventually be recognized as one of the mos…
“The Poetic Genius is the true Man, and the Body or Outward Form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius.”
Neighbourhood:
Devotional Poets, Hymn Writers, Mystical & Spiritual Poets, Political Poets, Romantic Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality
John Clare was born on 13 July 1793 in Helpston, a village then in Northamptonshire and now associated with Cambridgeshire, and died on 20 May 1864 in Northampton General Lunatic Asylum. He came to be called the “peasant poet,” a phrase that helped sell his first books but also diminished him by making his social origins seem more important than his imagination. Clare was indeed the son of agricultural labourers, a m…
“I found the poems in the fields and only wrote them down.”
Neighbourhood:
Death & Mortality, Nature Poets, Romantic Poets, Social Justice Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Wonder, Spirituality
