Look Clare, Look!

Look Clare, Look!

by Clare Pollard (Author)

Synopsis

Look, Clare! Look! is the story of a year. When Clare Pollard set off on a six-month world trip, she wanted to write a long poem which engaged with what she saw and felt during her travels. On her return, she discovered that her father was seriously ill, and his funeral was held on New Year's Eve. Clare Pollard's third collection is a book about journeys and home. She looks closely at both global issues and the blossom in her yard. Beginning as a meditation on western guilt against the backdrop of SARS and the Iraq War, it ends by looking at our closest relationships, in poems that deal with a pregnancy scare and her engagement, as well as illness and loss. 'Clare Pollard has so much youthful talent that it's alarming. The poems in Bedtime have all the virtues of youth. They are raw and sexy, exotic and compelling, their insights at once intimate and universal. There's a cruel precision of observation too, coupled with a real opulence, about these pieces - and the wonderful, reckless revelling in the language. I loved the headlong rush of it all' - catherine czerkawska, Mslexia 'Pollard's poems are like shards of glass, brittle, dangerous things that work their way under your skin. Her voice captures the pain, anxiety and emptiness of a generation weaned on Coke and Diamond White, reared on fast food and TV, and now entering adulthood armed with utterly ephemeral cultural reference points and a strong suit in self-destruction...Her poems compulsively re-enact the reaching out to life and the withdrawing in pain...Pollard is a poet of the 21st century, a witness of the present and a shaper of its voice' - john sears, PopMatters 'Both a seasoned observer and a master technician...like early Sylvia Plath re-interpreted for the Trainspotting generation' - Daily Mail

$11.14

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 64
Edition: illustrated edition
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Published: 30 Jun 2005

ISBN 10: 1852247096
ISBN 13: 9781852247096

Author Bio
clare pollard was born in 1978. After studying at Cambridge she moved to London, where she now lives. She has published two previous collections of poetry, The Heavy-Petting Zoo (Bloodaxe, 1998) which she wrote whilst still at school, and Bedtime (Bloodaxe, 2002.) Her first play The Weather (Faber, 2004) premiered at The Royal Court Theatre. Clare has supported her writing with jobs as a cinema usher, a barmaid, Managing Editor of The Idler magazine and assistant director of the Clerkenwell Literary Festival. She is currently editing the poetry journal Reactions. Look, Clare! Look! is her third collection.