Judith Allnatt, "The Poet's Wife"

Judith Allnatt writes novels, poetry and short stories. Her most recently published novel, The Poet’s Wife, was shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award. Her first novel, A Mile of River, was featured as a Radio 5 Live Book of the Month and shortlisted for the Portico Prize. Short stories have featured in the Bridport Prize Anthology, the Commonwealth Short Story Awards, the Edinburgh Flash Fiction Awards and on BBC Radio 4. Judith lectures widely and has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Her website is here. 

About The Poet's Wife, by Judith Allnatt
Inspired by the letters written by the poet John Clare from the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum, The Poet’s Wife gives a voice to Patty Clare as she faces John’s deluded belief that he is married to Mary Joyce, his childhood sweetheart, whom Patty can never hope to rival. 

Patty loves John deeply, but he seems lost to her. Plagued by jealousy, she seeks strength in memories: their whirlwind courtship, the poems John wrote for her, their shared affinity for the land. But as John descends further into delusion, she struggles to conquer her own anger and hurt, and reconcile with the man she now barely knows.

You can read more about The Poet’s Wife here. You can read an interview with the author by Adèle Geras here. Below, you can read an extract from the novel. 

From The Poet’s Wife
After four years away, I found my husband sitting by the side of the road, picking gravel from his shoe and with his foot bloody from long walking. His clothes were crumpled from nights spent in the hedge or goodness knows where, and he had an old wide-awake hat on the back of his head like a gypsy.

"John," I said. "Are you coming home?"

When he heard his name he looked up at me, as if curious that I knew it, then held out his shoe to me as if to show me its parlous state: its sole loose and hanging from the upper. I bent and put it back upon his foot as gently as I could, for his stocking was brown with blood from many blisters. He watched my face with a look of puzzlement and when I stood and reached out my hand to help him up he refused it, levered himself up by his own efforts and began to walk away. His short figure and limping gait were so pitiful as he set off again along the empty road that my heart followed straight after him.

I turned back to Mr. Ward and Charles who were waiting in the cart, but they looked as nonplussed as I. Not wishing to lose him again, I followed down the road calling "John! Wait!" and when I reached him I caught his hands fast in mine. 

He pulled them away as if I had burned him saying "Are you drunk, woman? Leave me be!" and continued to shuffle along with his shoulders set as if he had been mortally offended.

Robert Hamberger, "A Length of Road: Finding Myself in the Footsteps of John Clare"

 

Robert Hamberger has been shortlisted and highly commended for Forward prizes, appearing in the Forward Book of Poetry 2020. He has been awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship; his poetry has been featured as the Guardian Poem of the Week and in British, American, Irish and Japanese anthologies. He has published six poetry pamphlets and four full-length collections. Blue Wallpaper (published by Waterloo Press) was shortlisted for the 2020 Polari Prize. His prose memoir with poems A Length of Road: Finding Myself in the Footsteps of John Clare was published by John Murray in summer 2021. His website is here.  

About A Length of Road: Finding Myself in the Footsteps of John Clare, by Robert Hamberger

In 1841 the ‘peasant poet’ John Clare escaped from an asylum in Epping Forest, where he had been for four years, and walked over eighty miles home to Northamptonshire. Struggling with his mental health, Clare was attempting to return to his idealised first love, Mary, unaware that she had died three years earlier.

In 1995, with his life in crisis and his own mental health fragile, Robert decided to retrace Clare’s route along the Great North Road in a punishing four-day journey. As he walked he reflected on the changing landscape and on the evolving shape of his own family, on fatherhood and masculinity, and on the meaning of home.

Part memoir, part nature writing, part literary criticism – with original poetry – A Length of Road is a lyrical exploration of class, gender, grief and sexuality through the author’s own experiences and through the autobiographical writing of John Clare. 

 

From A Length of Road

I suddenly find Clare’s milestone:

34

MILES

from

LONDON

in chiselled and black-painted letters on a thigh-high pale stone pillar. Nettles and goosegrass surround its base, edging the tarmac walkway. I yank away the stems of an elderflower bush to uncover its face, like it could be an honoured monument. A line of ants is tracking across its foot. Its crown is spattered by a few mustard medallions of lichen, and a rod of iron must be staked through its centre, as I pick at a small black button that won’t budge. I rest my back against it and reread Clare’s account, to make sure it’s the one he mentioned. His journal carries a footnote: On searching my pockets after the above was written I found part of a newspaper vide ‘Morning Chronicle’ on which the following fragments were pencilled ... Wednesday – Jacks Hill is passed already consisting of a beer shop and some houses on the hill appearing newly built – the last Mile stone 35 Miles from London. In fact 34 is carved, but what’s a mile between friends? I feel certain Clare paused here to scribble that note. He couldn’t stop writing, even through his exhaustion, and pencil on a scrap of newsprint would suffice. 

I snap a photo like a tourist, lay my palm on stone for blessing. I imagine it, every midnight, spelling its message to foxes and whoever else may be passing. Whereas I’m usually hobbling behind Clare in the long shadow he’s cast, for this minute stopped at a marker where I’m sure he stood in 1841, our shadows briefly cross.