Lives of the Female Poets

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Clare Pollard thumbs her nose at Dr Johnsons 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 poets 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 books long, closing poem, Clare Pollards playful sixth collection celebrates and commemorates all those female poets who have come before.