DURHAM LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2000

 

CLARE POLLARD

Clare Pollard survived a Bolton comprehensive and an out of school education at the town’s indie nightclub to play electric guitar with unrivalled incompetence, as well as to study English at Cambridge. Her poems have already appeared in many magazines. She read a poem in the toilets at the Ritzy for a recent BBC Talent 2000 documentary, and was a Poetry Review ‘New Poet of ‘96’.

Clare Pollard wrote most of the poems in The Heavy Petting Zoo while still at school in Bolton.. Her poems are fresh and energetic, barbed with a modern girl’s natural cynicism, but tempered with open-eyed hope as well as wry acceptance.

In The Heavy-Petting Zoo, the male of the species is shown in all his preening glory, his growling and posturing exposed but also given marks out of ten. The book gives us an insider’s in-your-face portrayal of the tarnished lives of today’s bright young things.

 

From A Friday Night at the End of the Millennium

His hair is chilli-red,

His eyes fish scales,

His smile a small boy’s.

I used to get tiddly when I saw him –

Now I just feel weighted.

Tired. My bones will shatter

Like peanut brittle or barley sugar

Or some other crap sweet.

Another pint, and they charge

Me two pounds this time –

They must have seen me staggering,

But I’m too drunk to care.

Alcohol goes straight through me.

The girls’ loos are full

Of lads smoking joints,

So I have to piss quietly,

Hovering over the bowl

As though I’m a hummingbird

In order to avoid diseases.

Stale urine.

Someone’s bloody tampon goads me redly.

I read the sign on the toilet door,

It says: Avoid unwanted

Pregnancy – use a telephone.

Oh, that used to make us laugh

When this bitter-dark club seemed new;

When this tongue-moist air

Didn’t catch in my throat

Like a wishbone. I always wish

For something utterly impossible:

Lager that hasn’t been watered down,

A star, him

The poor wish-fairies –

I am expecting miracles!

It isn’t fair on them.

This bad luck is my own responsibility.

It is my own fault,

I take all the blame.

I vow to aim lower and stop thinking

I’m the fucking second coming,

Then pull up my silk copping knickers.

Stumble out, eyes greyed

By a gauze of yeast.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

Says I’m the biggest dog of all.

My flaws grow vivid.

Nuclear white light strips my skin off

And leaves the true-me clean.