Jeremy Clarke (poet)

Career

Clarke's debut collection, Devon Hymns (2010), featured artwork by John Berger and Yves Berger. A limited edition chapbook, Incidents of Travel, and Common Prayer (pamphlet) were published in 2012. His second full collection, Spatiamentum, was published in 2014 (illustrations by Italian artist Paola Volpato). All titles were published by Rufus Books, Toronto. A third collection, Psalms in the Vulgar Tongue, was published by Wounded Wolf Press (Turkey) in 2017. An illustrated booklet, Cathedral, was privately printed in London in 2017.

Clarke has collaborated with British sculptor Emily Young on a work in stone for St Pancras Old Church in London. The stone, a polished block of Carrera marble, is inscribed with an extract from Clarke's poem Praise. It reads: 'And I am here / in a place beyond desire / or fear'. It was unveiled in 2009.

Clarke participated in the exhibition Works On Paper (Crypt Gallery, London, 1–14 September, 2014), showing 20 framed psalms (taken from his collection Psalms in the Vulgar Tongue). Each piece is a handwritten manuscript in brown ink on stained wood with original poem.

In 2016, a 'psalm card' artwork was permanently installed in the Church of St. Anselm & St. Cecilia, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London.

Also in 2016 a series of artworks was created under the title Host. Each one is an original text printed on a large watercolour sheet left for one winter on a London rooftop. They are held in both public and private collections.

In John Berger's novel From A to X (2008) Clarke appears as the character Hasan, a street sweeper and poet, living alone in a spare, unfurnished room.

Clarke's long poem Music for Amen appeared in the anthology The Long White Thread of Words: Poems for John Berger (Smokestack Books, 2016).

Clarke is currently a Poet in Residence at Eton College.