Poet

Clare Pollard

(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1978)

Biography

Clare Pollard grew up in Bolton and later read English at Cambridge University. She now lives in London where she teaches poetry at the City Lit. She has published three collections of poetry with Bloodaxe: The Heavy Petting Zoo (1998), Bedtime (2002) and Look, Clare, Look! (2005). The first of these was largely written while she was still at school and she was subsequently chosen by the Poetry Society as one of Poetry Review’s “New Poets of 1996” at the age of only 16. She went on to win an Eric Gregory Award in 2000.

As an editor, she has worked on The Idler and also Reactions 5. Her play The Weather (Faber, 2004) was performed at the Royal Court, and her recent documentary My Male Muse (2007) was a Radio 4 Pick of the Year. She has also presented two television documentaries, one for Channel 4 with verse commentary.

Claire’s influences include the late Anne Sexton, who she studied and wrote about for the Critical Quarterly, and Sexton’s impact on her work is apparent in her latest collection. She was also involved in the British Council’s Converging Lines project, translating Hungarian poets including Anna T. Szabo.

Claire writes most of her poems in bed whilst unable to sleep, and her current interests include “travel, red wine, tarot-cards, coloured tights and my husband’s cooking”.

Bibliography

The Heavy-Petting Zoo, Bloodaxe, Newcastle, 1998
Bedtime, Bloodaxe, Newcastle, 2002
The Weather, Faber and Faber, London, 2004
Look, Clare! Look! Bloodaxe, Newcastle, 2005
Reactions 5: New Poetry (as editor), Pen & Inc Press, Norwich, 2005

Links

Getting Poetry to Confess
http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=4935
Article from Magma, via the Poetry Library’s magazine resource.

For My Future Daughter
http://www.thepoem.co.uk/limelight/pollard.htm
A poem from Limelight #7.

Shopping for Poems
http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/competitions/fyp/lessonplans/lesson07cp/
A lesson plan for teachers commissioned for the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2007.

Latitude Festival Interview
http://www.latitudefestival.co.uk/news/index.aspx?aid=bb27f4d7-5a45-44c6-8c58-69f6454d75db
Clare talks about performing poetry.

Poems

PENDLE LOVELY TREES OCTOBER ROSES THE CITY-DWELLER’S LAMENT THE LURE THE TWO RAVENS THE PANTHER

Poems

Poems of Clare Pollard

Partners

LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère

Clare Pollard

Clare Pollard

Poems

PENDLE

LOVELY TREES

OCTOBER ROSES

THE CITY-DWELLER’S LAMENT

THE LURE

THE TWO RAVENS

THE PANTHER

Sponsors

Partners