John Clare was born into poverty in the village of Helpstone in Northamptonshire. (Now in Cambridgeshire) He was working in the fields at the age of eight and learned to read and write in a "dame" school. His reflective chronicle in verse of village life and the natural world surrounding it have never been surpassed, so how did a man with such a start in life become one of our greatest poets? This week Helen Mark goes in search of John Clare.

John Clare

Simon Kovesi a lecturer at Oxford Brookes University and a Clare enthusiast meets Helen in Helpstone beside Clare's grave. The tombstone inscription reads Poets are born not made but as Simon points out this was added by the Victorians who had a very romantic notion of rural poets. Clare was exposed to a rich tradition of oral history as well as verse and music, after all his father was a fiddler and singer.

Simon makes the point that Clare's education continued beyond any formal education and his thirst for literature was such that he would walk for miles into Stamford to get his hands on books. Clare would have stood out in any society but in an isolated agricultural village such as Helpstone he was viewed with suspicion and no little fear. He was a man apart and he suffered for it. The long working day, the poverty and hovel he lived in all conspired to push him out and led him to seek refuge in his beloved countryside-his special places.

Simon Kovesi

Ronald Blythe is an author and poet, he too lives in a village in the Fens and has reflected upon the social changes in village life. His book Akenfield is an evocative portrait of an English village and in it he captures the voices of the men and women who shaped our landscape, the ditch diggers and field workers who are often overlooked and forgotten. He is also President of the John Clare society and tells Helen about how his life has been influenced by the "genius" of Clare.

Ronald Blythe

Landscape Artist Tony Day lives in the village of Wicken. He takes Helen to his favourite spot in Wicken Fen and tells her of the solitude he needs to paint and how his form of creativity is a private, personal thing as intimate as writing a love letter.

He too has worked in the fields and was brought up in a village that defined work in a physical narrow way - painting and painters were certainly not considered workers and he struggled to keep his dream of being an artist alive. He shares something else with John Clare - a love of his native countryside and even when he worked in Cambridge he would return again and again to capture it, as with Clare he would be lost without a strong sense of home.

Wicken Fen National Reserve

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