'Taking its name - and project - from Samuel Johnson's 1781 all-male Lives of the Poets , Pollard's Lives of the Female Poets pays tribute to the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, Forough Farrokhzad, Praxilla, Emily Brontë and Wanda Coleman, juxtaposing poetic history with scenes from her own contemporary life as a female poet.[.] In establishing a tradition of women and women's (written) work, Pollard elevates women's work and lives (embodied, messy, meaty, boozy) to being worthy of poetry.' - Ellora Sutton, Mslexia 'Pollard's latest collection spans the breadth of human creativity and creation. It's at once a joyous tribute to some of history's greatest female poets and to the smaller things that make a life - like cocktails, and head lice. These poems are physical and playful, bold yet delicate as we're swept along by references and allusions that dance off the page. It's poetry at its most confident. In the crescendoing titular poem Pollard's "saintly Poetess" deservedly finds her place in the canon she's honouring.

' - Nasim Rebecca Asl, Poetry Book Society Autumn Bulletin 2025 'Pollard's is a gritty reality, but one grounded with a culturally aware, geographically various, and historically wide-ranging sensibility: there are versions of creation myths, fairy tales, mystic poems, and laments for lost contemporaries. clear-eyed, intelligent questioning of what the world today offers our children, our future(s).' -- Heidi Williamson, The Poetry School 'Her work really is emphatically of our time, capturing the world in its beauties and horrors in writing that's technically superb, but which also has what, if I was a sentimental chap, I'd call heart.' -- Ian McMillan, The Verb 'Since her late teens, Clare Pollard has kept her poetic finger on the pulse of the world, writing poems of fierce love about the full scope of contemporary life from the intimacy of motherhood and the divided streets of London to elegies for the victims of honour killings and the climate crisis. Wonderfully skilled and with a rare lyrical gift, her poems ask today the questions the rest of us will ask tomorrow.' -- Owen Sheers.