Polly Clark lives on the west coast of Scotland. She has pursued a number of careers including zookeeping at Edinburgh Zoo and teaching English in Hungary. In 1997 she won an Eric Gregory Award, and her two collections of poetry are ‘Kiss’ (Bloodaxe 2000), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and ‘Take Me With You’ (Bloodaxe 2005), a Poetry Book Society Choice and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.

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SELECTED POETRY

by
Polly Clark

BAR HARBOR

Here is where we took the boat
across the harbour whose bed
crawls with lobsters clamouring
me please! me please!

who since babyhood
have been thrown back

until the day the familiar hand
closes round a fat blue waist,

and, waving in anticipation,
they land in adult surprise –

here is where we lay side by side
on the pink hotel bed.

Here is where the islands
rose out of the haze,

and you walked the shingle
tracked by a shadow

like a stray that has decided
the future is with you,

scrabbling to catch you
asking no further questions.

© Polly Clark

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TRASH

Down beside the sour low tide
where Mickey Mouse’s yellow hand
drifts across his bursting heart,

the rocks lay out their washed-up wares:
the chins and ears of fancy cups
where grandmas pressed their lips,

the plate’s edge I remember
from school, its blue rim
smart and plump as a teapot.

All the teatimes of my childhood
have been smashed here,
and when the tide recedes again

I’m back, pockets stupidly full,
hungry from a time before I knew
I’d be a scavenger of my life.

© Polly Clark

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DISORDER

My hands are alcoholics
trembling with regret.

My feet are co-dependent,
plodding after the dead,

the frozen, the vanished.
My gut’s an obsessive:

I’ve eaten the same meal
all my life, just like Kafka.

It’s the only way I feel
safe, or optimistic at all.

My eyes are bi-polar,
seeing too much and not enough;

and of my sectioned ears
only a sliver is visible.

They’re ashamed of the pain
that is their life now

and the rabble
they’re stuck with

is, with the best will in the world,
fucking up their recovery.

© Polly Clark

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YARIGUIES BRUSH FINCH

British-led expedition discovers new species of bird (October 2006)

You may be dead already,
nipped upright by giant hands,

or perhaps the loll of your head,
beak clamped shut and wings

slammed against escape
simply cry your bewilderment.

I’ve seen it before: the hunch of the body
when revelations are trawled from the dark,

the body pathetic in its plumage,
flapping a language no one understands.

But without this tiny violence
we will be poorer:

our possession of you
may teach us all we need to know.

Wake little bird. No secret
can resist these gentle hands.

© Polly Clark

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