Changeling

Clare Pollard

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781852249113
• eBook ISBN:
  9781780370583
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Clare Pollard's fourth collection is steeped in folktale and ballads, and looks at the stories we tell about ourselves. From the Pendle witch-trials in 17th-century Lancashire to the gangs of modern-day east London, Changeling takes on our myths and monsters. These are poems of place that journey from Zennor to Whitby, Broadstairs to Brick Lane. Whether relocating the traditional ballad 'The Twa Corbies' to war-torn Iraq, introducing us to the bearded lady Miss Lupin, or giving us a glimpse of the 'beast of Bolton', Changeling is a book about our relationship with the Other: fear and trust, force and freedom. '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. 'The themes are ancient -guilt, grief, the almost unbearable com-mingling of beauty and suffering -but shown through contemporary globalised life in all its grossness and glory…Pollard's wit, honesty and recklessness' -Frances Leviston, Yorkshire Post. 'Clare Pollard has so much youthful talent that it's alarming. The poems are raw and sexy, exotic and compelling, their insights at once intimate and universal. There's a cruel precision of observation too, coupled with a real opulence, about these pieces… I loved the headlong rush of it all' -Catherine Czerkawska, Mslexia. 'Pollard's poems are like shards of glass, brittle, dangerous things that work their way under your skin…Pollard is a poet of the 21st century, a witness of the present and a shaper of its voice' -John Sears, PopMatters.

The Wood

I

Halfway through my life,

I found myself in a dark wood.

The proper road was lost.

I had been searching for food –

because I had responsibilities,

because no one else would.

I’d thought I’d seen horse mushrooms,

but touched, their flesh bruised yellow,

so I left them there as poison,

and then turned, and all had shifted,

and the breathing forest darkened.

I was in a savage labyrinth,

its columns ancient, buttressed, crusted

with verdigris, the roof

a mosaic of green and turquoise

gargoyled by bitching magpies,

the floor tiled with golden leaves.

It was leaking and trees creaked like closing doors,

and every time a path split, I chose

wronger, I chose darker,

and I had to keep on choosing.

There was only choice or death.

II

Hours later I was snivelling, scratched

by briar, branch-smacked, blackness

came on fast. Stopped by thirst

at the green mouth of a pool,

I drank, slapped my face with the despair of it,

stared dumb on cankered violets,

a hedgehog’s guts lit up with maggots,

a rabbit as it ate its own wet child,

beetles fucking – all the shuddering wild.

The moon slid over my head like a stone,

and then a young man trotted out,

fawn-lean, he-she yawned, scratched

her crotch, her arms tattooed with oxlips,

cobwebs, eglantine; eyes green,

her mouth a riddled musk-rose. ‘Well –’

‘I’m lost,’ I said. ‘And this is hell.

I have to find my home.’

‘Have?’ she laughed, ‘All you have to do is live,’

and she winked and took my hand,

and she fed me bits of mushroom,

and the hurting forest reeled.

III

That night I learned the animal I was,

I chose wronger, I chose darker,

rubbed and sniffed and lapped

at green mouths, puffballs, meat still stiff

with living blood. I loved the ass,

his fair large ears. I felt light

as peaseblossom, a worm-eaten nut.

She smeared me in the uncouth forest,

made me bay, I ripened

in the blackness for her prick.

We drank from waters warped, then, drunk,

I broke a rabbit’s neck. I ate.

I carved my name on every tree, and hers,

and let her teach to me

that love deserves the dark house and the whip;

that sex and sweat and flesh and drink and power

are all this body wants –

and he-she showed me beasts lay down with Queens,

girls flew, boys crawled.

I watched her toss dove-chicks to a bright fox;

wings were pulled from butterflies;

Pan sucked his cock.

I licked my fingers.

IV

I woke up emptied – a worm-eaten nut,

a cankered violet, a green mouth,

my wings pulled off.

I was laid flat as if to measure my own grave,

my young man gone, my bowels

aslide with dark.

And though I knew my journey was my story,

when I heard the hounds and horns

and I knew that they had found me,

I must admit I cried with the relief of it –

I let myself be taken back to home.

In their room I found my babies

rocking quiet, kissed their faces,

vowed to them their mother

wouldn’t leave the road again,

because I have responsibilities,

I have to feed their mouths.

At night the wood still burns me like green fire,

but I have to keep on choosing.

I ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Description
• Title Page
• Dedication
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CONTENTS
• Tam Lin’s Wife
• The Panther
• Pendle
• The Confession of Alizon Device
• Waiting for the Kettle to Boil, Lancashire
• October Roses
• First Sunflowers
• Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe
• The Market
• Adventures in Capitalism
• ‘Can You Describe This?’
• The Oil
• Introducing That Most Marvellous Human Freak, the Bearded Lady Miss Lupin
• The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke
• How to Recognise Saints by their Attributes
• Reynardine
• Geraniums
• Broadstairs
• The Cruel Father
• Spell
• Guinevere
• Empathy
• Whitby
• Dinner for Two
• Revelations
• An Island
• Cassandra in Mycenae
• Prescription
• Lovely Trees
• Thirtieth
• The Whale’s Tale
• The Lure
• Beads
• Babylon
• Amtssprache
• The Language of Flowers, or The Primrose
• The City-dweller Laments
• Lines Written on the Norfolk Broads
• The Skulls of Dalston
• Zennor
• The Two Ravens
• The Wood
• The Caravan
• About the Author
• Copyright