"The Heavy-petting zoo" by Clare Pollard (Bloodaxe, 1998)

She went to school at a Bolton comprehensive (apparently the poems date largely from that time), and read English at Cambridge University. There's some rhyme, but it's mostly loose free verse. The differences between hopes and reality figure large - unrequited love, but also thwarted wishes.

• According to the persona, "Attempt at a beautiful poem" fails
• "Valentine" describes a let down
• In "Dream of Explosions", the persona wants to escape from the mundane
• "Angel Song" (which I like) is from the PoV of an Xmas tree decoration - "An afterthought in an outfit made from/ someone's old wedding dress. These needles/ bring not sleep, just little hurts"
• "Poem for My Future Love" is another plea for extremes - "I do not want to be fond of his little ways ... I want to fall in love so hard it bruises"

There's vulnerability, lack of self-confidence - in "Light Entertainment" beer-drinking God makes the persona the star of a sit-com. In the title poem the 2nd-person narrator's at a party - "he's with her somewhere. They're probably mewling cutely at each other, or else she's stripped and pink as a piglet and they're at it like rabbits. It's sickeningly bestial. You hope they get myxomatosis. Yet in your small child's heart you know that if he'd called you, you'd have followed him as she did". Or how about this, that starts the 2nd poem - "The day that I met you/ was the first day of sun./ I was shiny and new./ You thawed me in an hour;/ made me mute as a flower -/ all good clean fun.". It's the sort of rawness that I'm only sociologically interested in. The language isn't fresh. "A Friday Night at the End of a Millennium" is 12.5 pages, short-lined, covering similar ground. "Fresher" and "Butterfly Collector" are male-PoV though the themes are the same as the female-PoV ones.

That's far from the only style in the book however - "The Butcher's Cat" is different, though it still deals with the sociology of gender. I think "Losing Control" is set in the St. Andrews St. branch of a bank in Cambridge. Something like "Hara-kiri" must have been done before. The book's final poem, "The Last Love Poem" (7 pages), is the one I like best, the only one that makes the poet look "promising".

Other reviews

• John Sears

"Changeling" by Clare Pollard (Bloodaxe, 2011)

Poems in many shapes and sizes - some ballads, e.g. "Reynardine" which starts with

A basketful of dappled eggs      was swaying on my arm,      the sky had darkened to a bog. Faint lights picked out our farm.

some prose layouts, a shape poem, and a few sonnets. "First Sunflowers" is a loosely rhymed sonnet beginning

I watch them as they lean against the wall, like lads behind a bike-shed for a smoke. They nod, all skinny legs and awkward-tall; the leaves shrug in the breeze. The faces glow

"Lines Written on the Norfolk Broads" is traditional both in form and content - a kingfisher appears, "Illumination in the margin inked/ with lapis lazuli". Her use of imagery is clearest in "Lovely Trees" - "On one branch, a plastic bag breathed./ On another, pigeons, still trying to nap,/ kept themselves tucked in - plump grey jugs.// And below, of course, roots were gagging the drains,/ graffiti-ing lightning on walls".

I liked "Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe", "The Oil", "Introducing .... the Bearded Lady Miss Lupin" and particularly "Whitby", which begins with a quote from "Dracula", then "Whirlpools of gulls whip over harbour" and "The roses on the fortune teller's/ tatty hut are leeched,/ and I've never bought a reading/ for fear she'd shrug ... Yet something dark veins me, as jet veins these cliffs ... I'm the lighthouse lamp,/ guiding something in -/ the bay's sand fingers strain". Finally the persona says "Feed on me that I can feed,/ for I am sick of being tame. Evil and freedom/ are the same"

In contrast, "The Market", "Adventures in Capitalism" (loosely rhyming couplets) and "The City-dweller Laments" seem tame. In "Empathy" a dog bites a narrator, a young girl. The old owner sobs, tells the girl not to complain because the dogs will be put down. The girl stays silent. Later, reading in the papers about a tot being mauled, the girl wonders her silence was irresponsible or arrogant. Not worth 40 lines.

I think "As a girl, I pored over theories" (p.10) is a typo, but I'm less sure about "melons, mint and leak filled gardens" (p.49).

Other reviews

• Rina
• Guardian (Ben Wilkinson)