Prose Poem of the Month

June 2010

”I AM”

Written in Northampton County Asylum

I am! yet what I am who cares, or knows?
My friends forsake me like a memory lost.
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish, an oblivious host,
Shadows of life, whose very soul is lost.
And yet I am—I live—though I am toss’d

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dream,
Where there is neither sense of life, nor joys,
But the huge shipwreck of my own esteem
And all that’s dear. Even those I loved the best
Are strange—nay, they are stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod—
For scenes where woman never smiled or wept—
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Full of high thoughts, unborn. So let me lie,—
The grass below; above, the vaulted sky.

John Clare 1793-1864

Around 1840 Clare was committed to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum.
He remained here for the rest of his life, encouraged and helped to write.
Here he wrote this, his most famous poem, "I Am", but many others besides.

In 2005 Iain Sinclair wrote and published:
“EDGE OF THE ORISON. JOHN CLARE'S "JOURNEY OUT OF ESSEX"”
In 1841, the poet John Clare fled the asylum and walked eighty miles to his home. He was searching for his lost love, Mary Joyce - a woman then three years dead.
In 2000 the author Iain Sinclair, set out to recreate Clare's walk away from madness.
As he states in his book...he wanted to understand his bond with the poet.