# Episode 32: Clare Pollard - "The poem itself is a haunted house" Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way-7032462/episode-32-clare-pollard-the-poem-itself-is-a-haunted-house Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way-7032462/episode-32-clare-pollard-the-poem-itself-is-a-haunted-house.md Podcast: [The Poems We Made Along The Way](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way-7032462) Published: 2025-11-03T05:38:00+00:00 Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way/episodes/6907895d3906f8011a505a41 Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/66e5c7f558d4122cd96d65c9/e/6907895d3906f8011a505a41/media.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way-7032462/episodes/episode-32-clare-pollard-the-poem-itself-is-a-haunted-house Duration seconds: 4244 ## Resource On today’s episode of The Poems We Made Along the Way Gregory Kearns speaks to Clare Pollard about breaking your own rules, poems being like haunted houses, and the word poetess. Clare Pollard is a poet, novelist, children’s author, translator non-fiction writer and editor. She wrote her first poetry collection The Heavy-Petting Zoo (published by Bloodaxe) was written while she was still in school. Her other books include The Modern Fairies, The Untameables, Delphi and her most recent collection of poetry The Lives of the Female Poets is published by Bloodaxe.  Links to writing Lives of the Female Poets: https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/lives-of-the-female-poets  Incarnation: https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/incarnation-1134 Look, Clare ! Look!: https://www.bloodaxebooks.com/ecs/product/look-clare-look--817 Delphi: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/447396/delphi-by-pollard-clare/9780241995266  You can also use our affiliate link for Bookshop to find most of the books by most of the guests from the show. They are organised into lists for each series. If you use this link we get a fraction of the money you spend: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/series-five-the-poems-we-made-along-the-way      We’d also recommend enquiring with your local bookshops or libraries as well. Clare's Poetry Circle Substack: https://clarespoetrycircle.substack.com/ Things I watched in the lead up to this interview Launch reading by Emilie Jenlinek, Clare Pollard and Jessica Traynor (Bloodaxe): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He4JaXNJzdw Clare Pollard in conversation with Helen Eastman (Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUqZU6JNJo0&t=205s Poetry as a way to gain control | A Drink with Clare… ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way-7032462/episodes/episode-32-clare-pollard-the-poem-itself-is-a-haunted-house/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-poems-we-made-along-the-way-7032462/episode-32-clare-pollard-the-poem-itself-is-a-haunted-house.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.