John Harris (poet)

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John Harris in an undated photo.

For other persons named John Harris, see John Harris (disambiguation).

John Harris (1820 - 1884) was a Cornish poet.

Harris was born and raised in a two-bedroom cottage atop the slopes of Bolenowe Carn, a small Cornish village.

At age twelve, he was sent to work at the Dolcoath mine, an immense maze thousands of feet deep. Amazingly, he managed to combine a life of painful labour with the consistent production of powerful and moving poems, celebrating his native landscape around Carn Brea and the scenic splendors of Land's End and the Lizard. He could not afford pen and paper, so instead he improvised and used blackberry juice for ink and grocery bags for paper.

In the 1840s, he married Jane Rule, with whom he had four children: two sons and two daughters. When his second-born daughter, Lucretia, died during Christmas 1855, the grief-struck poet produced a painfully moving yet extraordinary eulogy.

At this stage Harris might well have died, a sick and disappointed man. But fortunately a friend found him a more congenial occupation, as a Bible-reader or traveling comforter at Falmouth, where he spent the second half of his life, until his death in 1884 when he requested that he should be buried at Treslothan Chapel, near Troon.

There has been some revival of interest in his work, and recently, the book The Cornish Poet was brought out by the John Harris society, containing his collected works.