Thirteen Eighty One Press

26/02/2021

Stamford Arts Centre to host Two Poetry-Writing Workshops led by Ellis Hall and Bridget Somekh, authors of 'Love's Cold Returning: John Clare's 1841 Odyssey from Essex to Northamptonshire'

2pm Sunday 28 March & Sunday 14 April.

Through his poetry, John Clare made his world shine with meaning, opening a vivid window on nineteenth-century rural life for the modern reader. Can we do the same for our own world, and capture the essence of our everyday lives for future generations? And if so, what can we learn from Clare that could help us?

To find out, join us in our guided poetry-writing workshops. Attend one or both, and have your work published on the Stamford Poetry page.

Part of the Verse Festival 2021

More info and to book:
https://www.stamfordartscentre.com/whats-on/all-shows/john-clare-poetry-workshops-for-spring/11975 #

Led by Ellis Hall and Bridget Somekh, authors of 'Love's Cold Returning: John Clare's 1841 Odyssey from Essex to Northamptonshire'

05/12/2020

We've had a busy couple of weeks giving talks to local history and poetry societies about our new book 'Love's Cold Returning: John Clare's 1841 Odyssey from Essex to Northamptonshire'.

Here's a taster of the wonderful feedback we have received.

"That was such an inspiring treat - I’ve loved Clare since I was about 8 and learned Clock a Clay to chant everywhere- and then a bit like you got educated out of him as a teacher! What a fascinating story, too - I like the way approach it as a sort of police procedural. And your musings - somehow the voice is exactly right, but what a tightrope to walk . It never feels like pastiche but so close in spirit" - Chris.

"What a wonderful talk! I now know so much more about Clare and shall continue to learn more" - Alison.

"Many thanks to both of you for an uplifting Zoom! It made me want to read (for the 3rd time!) your book. It's funny how you think you know a poet's work, but the experience of looking again at some poems rekindles and rejuvenates enthusiasm" - Lindsay.

"It was fascinating and now I have a copy of your book to hand so will indulge as often as I can" - Trish.

A big thank you to the members of the Baldock Historical Society, Cambridge Poetry Stanza and the North Herts Poetry Stanza. Bridget Somekh and Ellis Hall.

05/11/2020

On this first day of Lockdown 2 in Autumn, words from Musings 1 by Bridget Somekh which are inspired by John Clare's journey out of Essex in 1841. "What is it Allen's always telling me - / about self-identity? To know myself / and own myself for that will make me free / standing among the trees, firm and strong and sure, growing to God's heaven, wanting no more."

20/10/2020

Thank you to everyone at the University of Cambridge's Centre for John Clare Studies who today hosted a seminar with authors of 'Love's Cold Returning', Bridget Somekh and Ellis Hall. Over 40 people attended to hear the Faculty of English describe the event as 'profoundly moving' and their book as 'fabulous'. If you attended, you can order the book at a special discount https://thirteeneightyone.co.uk/product/loves-cold-returning/. Drawing by Pam Smy

16/10/2020

‘Calling John Clare’s Bluff – Pursuing his Psyche on the Road’

You are invited to join Bridget Somekh and Ellis Hall at this Zoom event on Tuesday 20 October, 1-2pm which is kindly hosted by the John Clare discussion Group.

Bridget and Ellis will be discussing ‘Journey out of Essex: Love’s Cold Returning', described in a recent TLS review as a ‘hybrid, multifaceted book’, with ‘equal measures of passion and factual precision’.

The authors will cover two aspects of their collaborative work, discussing how they went about investigating the Journey out of Essex, how their methodology diverged from that of those who’ve investigated it in the past, and how the approach yielded significant new information and insight – not just into Clare’s intentionality and state of mind on the trip, but also into his relationship with Eliza Emmerson and how it informed his imagined marriage to Mary Joyce.

Bridget will guide us through a reading of parts of the Journey out of Essex to reveal a meticulous and thoughtful construction lying beneath its apparently wayward surface, something that demonstrates – along with evidence from the two manuscripts in which it was written – that Clare was intending it for publication. She will also take us through the fascinating intricacies of Clare and Eliza Emmerson’s first literary exchange, revealing a poem by Clare, long thought to have been lost, which was the inspiration for Eliza’s own poetic ‘echo’, and explaining how 20 years later the ‘lost’ poem found its own echo in a stanza of Clare’s ‘Don Juan’, penned mere weeks before his escape from High Beach.

Ellis will explain how he and Bridget went about finding the echoes of Clare’s world in the twenty-first century, and how the second night of Clare’s Journey, while presenting unique challenges to the Literary Detective, yielded up both a fascinating conundrum and an unexpected and exciting discovery.

A discount on the book will be available for attendees.
Email [email protected] for the Zoom link to attend.

13/10/2020

Stilton & Manure?
A full day’s coach ride from London, Stilton in Cambridgeshire became a busy over-night stop for travellers taking the Great North Road. The two most important of the many stable inns in the village were the Angel and the Bell Inn.

The Angel’s old stable block is now occupied by a bar called ‘The Stilton Tunnels’. The authors of ‘Love’s Cold Returning’ take up the story…

“The Stilton Tunnels … still has the original stone floor over which carriage horses were led, and its brick walls bear the iron rings to which they were tethered while being groomed and foddered. The bar is named for the network of underground tunnels linking the inns and the parish church of St Mary Magdalene. Most are inaccessible now, blocked off by cave-ins, but Roy [the owner of the bar] has cleared a short section which he takes us down the stable cellars to see. He has plans to open up more of them, he says, and turn them into a tourist attraction. We trudge down a short way into a long, narrow brick-lined vault. The air is damp and chill, and we’re wearing polythene overshoes against the puddles of water that have collected from the dripping ceiling. … no one knows who build the tunnels, or for what purpose, but one source suggests they were used to store the large quantity of manure generated by the coaching trade, which was then collected by farmers the tunnels ends for dressing their fields. It’s as good an explanation as any, though it doesn’t account for the church being connected to the network.”

Does anyone know more about why the church might be connected?

Love's Cold Returning: John Clare's 1841 Odyssey from Essex to Northamptonshire is published by Thirteen Eighty One Press and available through Amazon or the publishers. £20.

02/10/2020

Love John Clare’s poems and the English landscape? Then ‘Love’s Cold Returning’ is not to be missed. In the TLS Erica Mcalpine says “A sensitive portrait of Clare emerges .. along with an unexpectedly granular record of England’s changing landscape... If Clare longs for [his love] Mary, Hall & Somekh seek the England Clare inhabited, only to find as the poet did, that she is no longer there.”

02/10/2020

A great review from Erica Mcalpine in the TLS: "'Love’s Cold Returning' is Ellis Hall and Bridget Somekh’s account of Clare’s physical and mental journey from the asylum back to his cottage. Retracing his footsteps and surmising his likeliest route, they have produced a lively narrative of the places he encountered. Their writing, punctuated by maps, drawings and Hall’s high-quality photographs, is pitched somewhere between travelogue and detective novel ...

Somekh’s interleaved poetic “musings” keep the middle of the book from becoming too dry: “When his foot hurts, he remembers the toil / and tenacity of birds”. Her rhythms differ from Clare’s – syntactically complex, fewer rhymes – but her images are sharp, literal and utterly dedicated to their subject...

Clare enthusiasts will appreciate the equal measures of passion and factual precision that Hall and Somekh pour into their hybrid, multifaceted book."

Buy from Amazon or from the publishers https://thirteeneightyone.co.uk

01/10/2020

On July 20, 1841, John Clare – an impoverished farm labourer turned poet – escaped the asylum in Epping Forest where he had been incarcerated for four

01/10/2020

On National Poetry Day we'd like to share an extract from 'Musings XXI' by Bridget Somekh which appears in full in Thirteen Eighty One Press's 'Love's Cold Returning: John Clare's 1841 Odyssey from Essex to Northamptonshire'.

When I stop to empty from my shoe a tiny chip
I think of him, leather wearing thin,
one shoe breaking, positioning each step
so that the loose sole doesn't catch
on the Great North Road's uneven flints.

He concentrates on his feet, raw rubbing
where blisters have burst, skin flaps stuck with blood
to the wool of his socks, a hole working his heel
to fret on coarse stitching. How did he stand the pain,
again and again, loose gravel working in?

He was a strong enough tramp when he started out
stocky and fit from Matthew Allen's garden
and days of compulsive rambling in the forest.
Now, he sees the road blurred and stupid
as himself, losing sense of time and place.

Love's Cold Returning is available from Amazon Books
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Loves-Cold-Returning-Odyssey-Northamptonshire/dp/0992607310

18/09/2020

Day One Part One of John Clare's 1841 Odyssey taking him from High Beach to the River Lea.

Ellis Hall sets the scene.... One July morning in 1841, poet John Clare walks out of the asylum at High Beach, Epping Forest where he has lived for four years, and instead of taking his habitual ramble among the hills of Epping Forest, simply keeps on going. As he later explains in a letter to Matthew Allen, the asylum's director, he has heard the voice of freedom and started". He is heading for home....

Musings I
He Speaks:
"What is it Allen's always telling me -
about self-identity? To know myself
and own myself for that will make me free,
standing among the trees, firm and strong and sure,
growing to God's heaven, wanting no more........

Bridget Somekh.

To order your copy of Love's Cold Returning go to https://thirteeneightyone.co.uk

13/09/2020

Finding Echoes & Ghosts...

We are delighted with what poet Penelope Shuttle has written about 'Love's Cold Returning'. Thank you!

"The authors employ many acutely connected perspectives in a book that is a treasury of information drawn from archival material, atmospheric photographs, essential timelines, and invaluable ‘ephemera’. To accompany the authors on their journey in the footsteps of Clare is a thrilling experience. In a landscape that has changed utterly from Clare’s day they find echoes and ghosts of the places that Clare knew in our contemporary urbanscape, playing detective to great effect.

The authors’ multiple sympathies are both unique and moving, and throughout give exact context to Clare as he heads home."

06/09/2020

06/09/2020

Part detective story, historical adventure and meditation on love and loss.....

To mark 200 years since John Clare's 'Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery', Thirteen Eighty One Press are delighted to publish 'Love’s Cold Returning: John Clare’s 1841 Odyssey from Essex to Northamptonshire' by Ellis Hall and Bridget Somekh.

On 20 July 1841, the poet John Clare (1793-1864) fled a lunatic asylum in Epping Forest and embarked on a four-day journey across five counties to find his adored wife and muse, Mary Joyce. But Mary had died three years earlier, a spinster.
Without money or provisions, and lamed by a broken shoe, Clare endured extreme hardship to be reunited with Mary. Clare was toiling home to a truth he would struggle to acknowledge – that his memory of their marriage was a delusion.

Using Clare’s brief account of his 85-mile trek, known as ‘The Journey out of Essex’, as a guide, authors Ellis Hall and Bridget Somekh shed new light on his journey and the world in which it took place. Following in his footsteps, they seek out the remains of that world in the 21st century. With original verse by Bridget Somekh, prose by Ellis Hall, maps, drawings and colour photographs, 'Love’s Cold Returning' is an important new addition to the canon of Clare scholarship.

"A lively and sympathetic account that tests and refines all previous myths and theories. A labour of love." - Iain Sinclair

"'Love’s Cold Returning' works on two levels: Bridget Somekh’s poems shadow Clare in his lonely obsession while she and Ellis Hall retrace his ‘Journey out of Essex’ in such detail that it becomes a social history of England. It moves from canals and aqueducts to gridlocked road, from common land and open heath to land banks and intensive agriculture. Along the way we encounter many forgotten trades, from the lightermen on the canals to the women in the crape factory, and Clare comes to seem more and more representative, not so much a hopeless romantic as ‘the muse of the broken land’." – Roger Garfitt

‘Love’s Cold Returning’ – The Book Posted by admin | Publications A detective story, a historical adventure, a meditation on love and loss by Ellis Hall and Bridget Somekh. Paperback 410 pages, 220+ illustrations, maps and colour photographs. In July 1841, the poet John Clare escaped a lunat...