Description
The landscape of Polly Clark's "Take Me with You" is strange and dangerous, her narrators searching for answers to questions about the nature of human attachment and longing. Her acclaimed first book, "Kiss", took the reader on a journey into the self. In this new collection, the journey turns outwards and explores the ways in which we connect with others and the wider world. Polly Clark's characters speak in many voices, both animal and human, bringing into focus the moments when we are most alive, and most alone. The poems are unsettling even as they are compelling, taking the reader from the last performance of a virtuoso octopus, to the dizzying industry of a Chinese city, to the vast and lonely seascapes of the Scottish coast.
About the Author
Polly Clark was born in Toronto in 1968 and brought up in Lancashire, Cumbria and the Borders of Scotland. She has worked variously as a zookeeper, a teacher of English in Hungary and in publishing at Oxford University Press. In 1997 she won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry. She has published three collections with Bloodaxe: her first collection, Kiss (2000), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; her second, Take Me With You (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), was a Poetry Book Society Choice shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize; her third was Farewell My Lovely (2009). Afterlife is due from Bloodaxe in 2022. Her pamphlet A Handbook for the Afterlife was shortlisted in the 2016 Michael Marks Awards. She lives in Helensburgh on Scotland's west coast, close to where W.H. Auden wrote The Orators. She writes on a houseboat in London. Larchfield, her debut novel, inspired by Auden's life and work in Helensburgh, was published to critical acclaim by Quercus under their riverrun imprint in 2017. Tiger, her second novel, was published by Quercus in 2019. She has also published short stories, and her memoir, Thank You So Much For Writing, won the 2014 Tony Lothian Prize for a new, unpublished biography.
Reviews
Clark chooses a vivid palette...Tiny bearcubs curl up in her psyche. A cockatoo clambers about her as if she were a gnarled tropical tree. There is an elemental freshness to these poems. -- Rachel Campbell-Johnson * The Times *
Alive and vital, her voice rings with inspired confidence, carries the stamp of what is necessary, poems that cannot be done without. -- Sarah Corbett * Poetry Wales *
Grippingly acute and assured. -- Gerard Woodward * TLS *
Book Information
ISBN 9781852247225
Author Polly Clark
Format Paperback
Page Count 64
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
About the Author
Polly Clark was born in Toronto in 1968 and brought up in Lancashire, Cumbria and the Borders of Scotland. She has worked variously as a zookeeper, a teacher of English in Hungary and in publishing at Oxford University Press. In 1997 she won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry. She has published three collections with Bloodaxe: her first collection, Kiss (2000), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; her second, Take Me With You (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), was a Poetry Book Society Choice shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize; her third was Farewell My Lovely (2009). Afterlife is due from Bloodaxe in 2022. Her pamphlet A Handbook for the Afterlife was shortlisted in the 2016 Michael Marks Awards. She lives in Helensburgh on Scotland's west coast, close to where W.H. Auden wrote The Orators. She writes on a houseboat in London. Larchfield, her debut novel, inspired by Auden's life and work in Helensburgh, was published to critical acclaim by Quercus under their riverrun imprint in 2017. Tiger, her second novel, was published by Quercus in 2019. She has also published short stories, and her memoir, Thank You So Much For Writing, won the 2014 Tony Lothian Prize for a new, unpublished biography.
Reviews
Clark chooses a vivid palette...Tiny bearcubs curl up in her psyche. A cockatoo clambers about her as if she were a gnarled tropical tree. There is an elemental freshness to these poems. -- Rachel Campbell-Johnson * The Times *
Alive and vital, her voice rings with inspired confidence, carries the stamp of what is necessary, poems that cannot be done without. -- Sarah Corbett * Poetry Wales *
Grippingly acute and assured. -- Gerard Woodward * TLS *
Book Information
ISBN 9781852247225
Author Polly Clark
Format Paperback
Page Count 64
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
