The award-winning poet Paul Farley, who was shortlisted for the 2025 T. S. Eliot Prize, celebrates in this 2008 BBC Radio 4 programme the work of John Clare through his landmark poem ‘The Lament of Swordy Well’. Written in the 1830s before Clare was committed to an asylum, ‘Swordy Well’, a tract of limestone heath near Clare’s home in Helpston, then in Northamptonshire, is both the subject and the narrator of the piece. It has been seen as a proto-ecological protest poem which grieves over the destruction, exploitation, and enclosure of common land by human society. The site, now called Swaddywell, is one of scientific interest, and has been preserved for its wildlife and habitat after decades of abuse.
The John Clare Society 
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