Lives of the Female Poets

Clare Pollard thumbs her nose at Dr Johnson’s all-male Lives of the Poets in chronicling her own life and theirs in her Lives of the Female Poets.

These portraits and self portraits offer glimpses into the poet’s own everyday life – from nit-combing and laundry to pollen counts and cocktails, watching school plays to shopping on Rye Lane – all whilst in conversation with female poets through the ages. Playing with forms from the version to the glosa, these are poems that remix, adapt and ch...