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
