FESTIVAL DIMNESS
SIR,—I have just seen Anthony West's observations on festivals. As far as his comments stem from Peterborough's observance of the John Clare centenary, they seem to comprise misconceptions based on misunderstanding. His strictures on festivals generally, in so far as they too often rep- resent prestige-seeking sprees involving imported audiences for imported artists, seem to me perfectly ,'ust, but the Clare centenary is quite another matter. In the first place, the occasion is not annual, but centennial—next year, incidentally, not this year— 'did, secondly, it is merely an intensification of an ,active and abiding interest on the part of unpaid :P/ local enthusiasts. As for the 'roots' which Mr. West would like to see—and again I'm in total sympathy with his viewpoint—Clare was born and lived very near to Peterborough, and most of his poetry is rooted in the local landscape.
In an age which. tends increasingly to confuse the genuinely erotic and the obscene and which is witnessing the continuing decimation of the English landscape, it is surely no bad thing•that local people should celebrate, in a spirit of sympathy, delight, and disinterested piety, a poet who sang of the pleasures of love and who has been described by Mr. Edmund Blunden as 'in some lights the best poet of Nature that this country and for all I know any other country ever produced.'
GEOFFREY SUMMERFIELD
City of Coventry Training College, Coventry
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