Look, Clare, Look!

by Clare Pollard

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. 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. 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 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 re-interpreted for the Trainspotting generation' - Daily Mail

Genres: Poetry

62 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2005

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good morning,
you're back,
and I make up black coffee like you've never been away,
whilst — shadowed by the curtains I won't open today —
you tell me how you hated to see me snooze
in another's arms this year:
my eyes shining like candles on a birthday cake,
my tongue dumb as a baby mouse, my hair
a dollop of syrup.
My body has been loose and happy. I'm getting a belly,
laughing at utter trivialities —
not your girl.

Where did that pale face that haunted you so
go? Where's the knife-drawer of her ribs?
Is she blind now to bleeding?
Why won't she moan?

You're like an ex I can't shake,
tall, with your impossible drowning eyes,
you take me out for a drink, sink
me into a kiss, play out old tunes, say: 'lie back,
you know you want to,
we belong together...'

and the next thing my kitchen roars with darker weather
and I'm filthy and I'm
fucked.

[Matt Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A++ poeming. Would read again.