Album Notes

Devon Hymns
by Jeremy Clarke

Devon Hymns was written over the course of a year based on the experiences of Londoner Jeremy Clarke living and working at Horriford Farm in Colyford, Devon (UK).

“Written with both wit and a profound sense of the time passing, Devon Hymns takes us to what he calls ‘the great mismatch / of man and field’. A place where the cattle themselves are recognised with a new vision of their existence. Witty and moving, reticent and self-revealing, harsh and lyrical by degrees.”
~ Ronald Blythe

"A Spanish stonemason asks: when is a stone properly placed? And he answers his own question: when my impatience to once more readjust it has vanished. Jeremy Clarke writes like a Spanish stonemason; his poems are houses, towers, bridges..."
~ John Berger

"A clarity of vision and tactility of imagery that matches Hopkins. Whatever he writes about – people, animals, things, places – it is as if he is seeing them from within. He doesn't impose his own expression, or even experience, upon them. The expression is of the thing in itself.”
~ Andrew Nicholson

“There is nothing sanctimonious about these hymns. Their sense of the spiritual is lightened and refreshed by a shrewd humour that sees the personality in animals and trees, even inanimate object. Overall, this is a beautiful book, and one which proves that pastoral is as rich a poetic theme as ever.”
~ Matthew Francis

Jeremy Clarke: "The simple truth, for me, always seems buried in a block of mental granite. I do ’see’ the simple truth and beauty of the everyday, but expressing it in a way that both resonates and has meaning, takes a great deal of time and attention. And in the end, of course, whatever one creates is always only an approximation of one’s original intention."
~ The Literateur, 28 October 2010