The Heavy Petting Zoo

Pollard, Clare

ISBN 10: 185224481X / ISBN 13: 9781852244811

Published by Newcastle upon Tyne; Bloodaxe;, 1998

About this Item

First edition, first printing of author's first collection of poetry. Signed by the author. Fine paperback original.

Seller Inventory # 4896

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Heavy Petting Zoo
• Publisher: Newcastle upon Tyne; Bloodaxe
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 185224481X
• ISBN 13: 9781852244811
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)

About this title

Synopsis

Clare Pollard wrote most of these poems while still at school in Bolton. Too young, perhaps, to expect anyone to take her seriously, but young enough to question that assumption and much else besides. 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 the world according to Clare Pollard writing as a teenager, an insider’s in-your-face portrayal of the tarnished lives of today’s bright young things.

About the Author

Clare Pollard was born in Bolton in 1978 and lives in London. She has published five collections with Bloodaxe: The Heavy-Petting Zoo (1998), which she wrote while still at school; Bedtime (2002); Look, Clare! Look (2005); Changeling (2011), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; and Incarnation (2017). Her translation Ovid's Heroines was published by Bloodaxe in 2013. Her first play The Weather (Faber, 2004) premièred at the Royal Court Theatre. She works as an editor, broadcaster and teacher. Her documentary for radio, My Male Muse (2007), was a Radio 4 Pick of the Year. She is co-editor, with James Byrne, of the anthology Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st century (Bloodaxe Books, 2009), and translator (with Maxamed Xasan ‘Alto’ and Said Jama Hussein) of Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf's The Sea-Migrations (Somali title: Tahriib), published by Bloodaxe Books in 2017 with The Poetry Translation Centre. Her pamphlet The Lives of the Female Poets was published by Bad Betty Press in 2019.  Her non-fiction book Fierce Bad Rabbits: The Tales Behind our Picture Books was published by Fig Tree in 2019, and her debut novel Delphi is forthcoming from Fig Tree in July 2022. She was Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation from 2017 to 2022 and was appointed Artistic Director of the Winchester Poetry Festival in 2022. Her new poem 'Pollen' – first published in Bad Lilies – is on the shortlist for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2022.