Katherine Lockton reviews
by Clare Pollard
Clare Pollard’s fourth collection Changeling takes on myths and monsters and places them in the world
of CCTV, Youtube, and Heat in order
to tackle more serious subjects such as world politics, child famine and gangs.
This collection moves away from the confessional tone which marked Pollard’s
earlier writing towards a more thematic and political writing. Pollard takes us
on a journey where we must “hang on tight and not let go and not let go.” A master of rhythm, Pollard manipulates lines
by slowing them down or increasing their pace as a means of highlighting and
making more serious points easier to digest.
One of the aspects that makes this collection stand out from
Pollard’s earlier works is her ability to ask important questions in a subtle
yet direct way. She doesn’t preach her own political views but rather opens
ideas up for discussion. As she points out “if wrong feels right, then what are
you sir?.” She develops this idea of wrong versus right in ‘Two Ravens’ where
she explores the idea that if something is good then the opposite must be bad; “if
they’re bad she’s good” and “if she’s bad we’re good.” The chiasmus here, as in
other poems in this collection, is used to build up and emphasise important
ideas and questions.
Pollard is not afraid to ask serious questions, neither is
she shy of sharing her own political views. Perhaps the best example of this is
‘Pendle’ where she write in the second person as a means of personalising the
issue so we care more. She does not
prescribe us political morphine, she gives us the option of taking poetic
Calpol instead. She does this by softening up and weaving the most serious
points within the fabric of her poems:
When your children curdle like milk & turn one by one to
clay dolls,
and your husband’s fledgling-weak & you’re a good
Christian woman,
then someone is to blame.
This is hidden amongst lines such as “when you dream of a
woman fucking goats” and “when you imagine her face yoked in a bridle” not
because Pollard is scared but because
the combination makes the journey both an entertainment and interrogation.
This is not to say that Pollard is not direct in tackling
world politics, as we can see in ‘30th’ where she tells us that “we
are so lucky and disgusting and we will pay for this tomorrow.”
Another way Pollard uses entertainment to explore
serious issues is ‘Tam Lin’s Wife’ where
myth is adopted and reinterpreted so
that love surviving and withstanding change is used to include illness in the
last stanza:
Dear Husband, all those things I prize in you –
your beauty, kindness, laugh –
are stripped off one by one
but even with them gone
my boy stares out from stricken shapes,
and love has no conditions. None.
This last stanza is
emblematic of Pollard’s compact, rhythmical writing through out the book.
Pollard is at her
best though when she combines powerful imagery and rhythm as in ‘The Skulls of
Dalston.’ It is not often that a poet presents the more demanding of their work
at readings, often opting for poems that are crowd pleasers and little else.
Pollard though chose to read some of her strongest pieces at her launch -
including ‘The Skulls of Dalston” - arguably the best poem in the collection,
which explores gang culture on a journey through the streets of East London.
The poem’s strength is obvious from the first few lines
where we learn of “sherbert death-heads, jack o’lanterns, acme eyeballs pinging
in eye-caves, tombstone teeth in bubblegums.” Pollard takes an image, compares
it to something else, develops it and just before we are tired of it moves on
to another one that is in the same world. She does this in a subtle, skillful
way which shows she is a master manipulator of
words.
This poem further develops the idea of differencences
addressed earlier in her work, but here it is explored through the use of
synonyms, which although similar in essence are different:
If I’m a blank, then he’s a void,
if I’m the scum, then he’s the dregs,
if I’m a ghost then he’s a shadow,
if I’m pigeon-shit then he’s a crow.
This idea is used to show just how different the gang world
is to ours so that even when on the same street “we are not on the same
street.” A real accomplishment of this
poem is the way Pollard manipulates pace and imagery as it takes on the gang
members’ language; “Murder Dem Pussies.”
It leaves us where we began the journey, at home, but somehow our home
has changed “so it’s best not to look…..We do not look.”
Comments
They've just read out a Clare Pollard poem on Poetry Please on Radio 4. I didn't quite catch the title but I thought that it was rather good.
Best wishes from Simon