Full Description
Clare Pollard cocks a snook at Dr Johnson's all-male Lives of the Poets in chronicling her own life and theirs in her Lives of the Female Poets. These portraits and self portraits offer glimpses into the poet's own everyday life - from nit-combing and laundry to pollen counts and cocktails, watching school plays to shopping on Rye Lane - all whilst in conversation with female poets through the ages.
Playing with forms from the version to the glosa, these are poems that remix, adapt and channel figures from Enheduanna, the first recorded poet, through to Wanda Coleman. Probing the idea of the 'Poetess' over time, there are also poems about writers' lives - sonnets for Anne Locke, who wrote the first English sonnet sequence; a sestina for Elizabeth Bishop; a series of prose poems about Emily Brontë; and a look at the tragic life of L.E.L.
Whether imagining a 'three-martini afternoon' at the Ritz with Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, or exploring the ways women writers have been erased from the canon in the book's long, closing poem, Clare Pollard's playful sixth collection celebrates and commemorates all those female poets who have come before.
Contents
11 Poetess
12 Inana after Enheduanna
14 On Emily Brontë, Aged Six
17 Pollen
18 The Head-louse
20 Praxilla
22 In Nunhead Cemetery (for Charlotte Mew)
23 The White Lady
26 Rye Lane
28 Sestina for Elizabeth Bishop
30 Pothos
32 Housecat
33 Cocktail List
33 Red Witch
34 Margarita
35 French 75
36 Negroni
37 Old-Fashioned
38 Blue Hawaii
39 Spoils
40 Two Sonnets for Anne Locke
42 The Sex Life of Emily Brontë
45 The Craving
46 The Pub Crawl
48 Three-Martini Afternoon
50 Improvisatrice
53 Emily Brontë and the Critic
55 Pornhub
56 Why I Won't Listen to Sad Pop Songs Any More
58 Last Word: a glosa for Wanda Coleman
60 Poetry after Marianne Moore
62 The Lives of the Female Poets
71 Acknowledgements
