‘Keats as a nebula’ : an interview with Nicholas Roe

Abstract

ANTAE: We are aware that you have recently published John Keats: A New Life. Could you tell us what led you to this new biography, and what one may expect upon reading it? NICHOLAS ROE: John Keats: A New Life grew out of my sense that there was more to find out, to see, and more to say about the poet’s early childhood in London, and how those experiences may have helped shape the poet he became and the poetry he later wrote. Keats has often been described as a ‘liminal’ poet who haunted borderlines and thresholds of various kinds; what I wanted to explore was whether there were any aspects—of the places he lived in, visited, or simply saw as he passed through—that might have fostered that imagination. So readers can expect a fuller account of Keats’s early years at Keats’s Livery Stables in Moorfields and the suburban streets of north London, and more on the influence of various places in which Keats chose to write.