A new performance of poems by Mike Stevens and new paintings by Mike Newton. Private view and performance on Friday 17 May 2024 in the Borlase Smart Room, St Ives School of Painting. All welcome. Free.
WHAT LIGHT FALLS ON
While some poets have disagreed about April (a time of ‘sweet showers’ or the ‘cruellest month’), few would disagree with the Romantic poet, John Clare, who died 20 May 1864, that May was the ‘Queen of Months’. Celebrated for its birdsong, flowers and the regeneration of the hedgerows ‘thick with green’, for some European communities the first day of May marks the beginning of summer. It is almost time to ‘cast a clout’.
Springtime celebrations are widespread, with some that are centuries old, including Padstow’s ‘Obby ‘Oss, Walpurgisnacht, as well as other ancient fire festivals such as Beltane. Some venerable Christian observances may also be local evolutions of earlier festivals that marked key points in the annual agricultural and astronomical cycles, while others, like Easter and Whitsun, reach back 2000 years.
Spring is a time of resurrection and new life, and the poems in this collection explore these, both literally and metaphorically. Some of the poems took shape during the ‘lockdown’ periods when the streets of St Ives were beautifully quiet during what would normally have been peak season. It was a delight to hear the birdsong unmuffled by traffic, helicopter flights and the general hubbub of a tourist town.
I am no expert on birds or wildflowers, but John Clare knew the names and the ways of hundreds of plants and animals. He was a great collector of old folk songs too, preserving many from being lost. Unfortunately, John Clare was living in a time of massive changes to the countryside. The so-called Agricultural Revolution was really a land grab from the peasant farmers to the wealthy landowners. The Inclosure Act 1773 empowered this, and, by the beginning of the 1800s, the number of private landowners had dropped from 250,000 to 32,000. 20 every day for 30 years. The fences erected to close off the common and ‘waste’ lands appeared to people like John Clare as monstrous impositions on the freedom of the countryside. An anonymous poem from the period opens with this indictment:
They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
Yet let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
A simple internet search quickly reveals that this process is still on-going and global in its reach. In the face of the continuing objectification, commodification and destruction of the natural world, cherishing these longer, warmer days, paying attention to the changes that each day brings, and remaining open to ‘the mystery/ of all the things/ that light falls on’ are all acts of resistance.
Mike Stevens
May 2024