Lives of the Female Poets

Clare Pollard was born in Bolton in 1978 and lives in London. She has published five collections with Bloodaxe: The Heavy-Petting Zoo (1998), which she wrote while still at school; Bedtime (2002); Look, Clare! Look! (2005); Changeling (2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; and Incarnation (2017). Her pamphlet The Lives of the Female Poets was published by Bad Betty Press in 2019. A full-length collection – her sixth – Lives of the Female Poets, is published by Bloodaxe Books in 2025.Her translation Ovid's Heroines was published by Bloodaxe in 2013. Her first play The Weather (Faber, 2004) premièred at the Royal Court Theatre. She works as an editor, broadcaster and teacher. Her documentary for radio, My Male Muse (2007), was a Radio 4 Pick of the Year. She is co-editor, with James Byrne, of the anthology Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st century (Bloodaxe Books, 2009), and translator (with Maxamed Xasan ‘Alto’ and Said Jama Hussein) of Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf's The Sea-Migrations (Somali title: Tahriib), published by Bloodaxe Books in 2017 with The Poetry Translation Centre. Her non-fiction book Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind our Picture Books was published by Fig Tree in 2019. Her debut novel Delphi (Fig Tree, 2022; Avid Reader, US, 2022) has been translated into German, Dutch and Spanish. This was followed by a second novel for adults, The Modern Fairies, from Fig Tree in 2024. Her illustrated book for children, The Untameables, was published by The Emma Press in 2024. She won the Tadeusz Bradecki Prize in 2025 for The Modern Fairies, an award given to works that combine storytelling fiction and non-fiction in original ways, encompassing a range of artistic genres, disciplines, cultures and subjects.Clare Pollard was Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation from 2017 to 2022 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Winchester Poetry Festival in 2022. Her poem 'Pollen' – first published in Bad Lilies – was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2022. In 2024 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

• 11 Poetess12 Inana after Enheduanna14 On Emily Brontë, Aged Six17 Pollen18 The Head-louse20 Praxilla22 In Nunhead Cemetery (for Charlotte Mew)23 The White Lady26 Rye Lane28 Sestina for Elizabeth Bishop30 Pothos32 Housecat33 Cocktail List33 Red Witch34 Margarita35 French 7536 Negroni37 Old-Fashioned38 Blue Hawaii39 Spoils40 Two Sonnets for Anne Locke42 The Sex Life of Emily Brontë45 The Craving46 The Pub Crawl48 Three-Martini Afternoon50 Improvisatrice53 Emily Brontë and the Critic55 Pornhub56 Why I Won’t Listen to Sad Pop Songs Any More58 Last Word: a glosa for Wanda Coleman60 Poetry after Marianne Moore62 The Lives of the Female Poets71 Acknowledgements

Pollard’s is a gritty reality, but one grounded with a culturally aware, geographically various, and historically wide-ranging sensibility: there are versions of creation myths, fairy tales, mystic poems, and laments for lost contemporaries… clear-eyed, intelligent questioning of what the world today offers our children, our future(s).