Book Review: A History of England in 25 poems by Catherine Clark

 

The concept of Catherine Clark’s history-poetry book is an interesting one: “…the history of England told in a new way: glimpsed through twenty-five remarkable poems written down between the eighth century and today, which connect us directly with the nation’s past, and the experiences, emotions and imaginations of those who lived it.”

And it’s fine. It really is fine. 

The trouble is that it felt like it had missed a few tricks. Yes, I liked (most of) the poems but the selection was a bit odd, ranging from some of the absolute best (Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales) through the historical oddities like The Agincourt Carol, to those which seemed a little strange (such as Crumble Hall). 

There is a paradox here. The better poems from any era have survived and are well-known and the less good have fallen by the wayside for a reason, so that if you go out of your way  to include lesser-known poems they are unlikely to be the best. And while I very much liked the fact that Clarke chose lesser-heard voices (women, PoC) she was necessarily picking from a much narrower library, especially historically and some of the poems, for me, lacked literary merit.

I also felt the definition of English history was a bit stretched: Clarke includes Geoffrey Hill’s Poetry After Auschwitz and though she acknowledges the difficulties (not just the fact that Auschwitz is by no definition an English event) I nevertheless thought it a bit of a stretch to say that Hill (who was a child during the war “is nevertheless implicated, like everyone, in the violence and brutality of the Holocaust.” 

On the whole I think Clarke’s choices were insightful, especially given that it was inevitable some significant events had to be left out, but I did feel that my enjoyment of the poetry was poorer for some of them. I largely enjoyed the commentary, too, though the same limitations apply: so much had to be left unsaid. 

As a result the book was somehow less than the sum of its parts, which is a pity — but I nevertheless enjoyed it for its quirkiness and I definitely learned from it.