Poetry - Kate Clanchy

Kate Clanchy has only published three volumes of poetry but she has already clocked up a wealth of awards. Her first book, Slattern, won the Forward Poetry Award for best first collection and the Somerset Maugham award, amongst others. Her latest offering, Newborn was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection of the Year. But such is the relatively low profile of poets compared to their novelist counterparts that her name may not be a familiar one. Tonight there is an opportunity to see her in person at Pelham House’s Monday Literary Club event.

Often described as a poet operating in distinctively ‘post-feminist’ territory, Clanchy’s poetry seems to follows the emotional trajectory of her life. The first collection, Slattern, is an exploration of her loves and desires which excited critical interest for its ‘honest sensuality’. She followed it with Samarkand in which she had shifted, it has been said, to ‘home-based emotional commitment: the satisfactions of assured monogamy’. Most recently, in Newborn, Clanchy chronicles the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth and her complex feelings about motherhood. From her early ambivalence in ‘Love’ 'I didn’t know how to keep him wrapped/ I didn’t know how to give him suck, I had no idea about him' to her unexpected tranquillity in ‘The Burden’. 'I’d never have thought this would be me', she tells us. ‘Content to tote the baby homeward'. ER