Geraldine Clarkson – författare

The Laureate’s Choice Anthology brings together substantial selections from each of the 20 poets chosen by Carol Ann Duffy during her time as Poet Laureate.

As Carol Ann concludes her hugely successful 10-year tenure we celebrate these exciting and eclectic new voices in contemporary verse.

Following on the trail of Crucifox, and picking up its scent, Isabelle Huppert, cunning and vulpine, tries out a range of exotic roles as actor and aesthete. An old lady has a factory to supply her with rouge. A headmistress wolf-whistles builders. Abducted girls call out from cupboards and crevices, and Pre-Raphaelite models complain. The spirit of Isabelle’s ideal home hangs in the air, drawing on histories and geographies both mythical and subversive; and ‘many rooms’—waiting rooms, fainting rooms, kitchens, sick rooms, parlours, television studios, convent cells— honeycomb the book.

Her search takes her to the transgressive cubicles of the central Bluebeard sequence and culminates in a meeting with a 17th Century Mexican proto-feminist nun. There is fasting, feasting and fornication; the lamenting and celebrating of homes real, imaginary and ideal. The animal kingdom is ever-present, howling in doorways and undergrowth, belying a polite exterior. A heavenly dog presides. Flowers and demons abound.

In Dream Island Home for Isabelle Hupert Geraldine Clarkson has pulled out all the stops, allowing her imagination to run unfettered and giddy across the glowing lawns and softly carpeted spaces of her poetic home from home. This astonishing 'super-collection' speaks of abandon but also of discretion and timidity, and a deft editorial hand. Poems call to each other across the pages, reprising themselves and their characters, opening doors and windows before slamming them shut. Poetry has seldom been this exuberant - at once care-worn but also care-free! This is an astonishing piece of work!**

Geraldine Clarkson lives in Warwickshire. Her poems have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including The Poetry Review, Poetry (Chicago), and The Best British Poetry (Salt Publishing, 2014), and have also been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 during the 2015 and 2016 Proms seasons. A selection of her work was published in Primers Vol 1 (Nine Arches Press/The Poetry School, 2016), and she has a chapbook, Declare (Shearsman Books, 2016). Supported by Arts Council England, she is preparing her first full-length collection.

"Geraldine Clarkson's poems are musical, often playful incantations that delight in the power of words. Formally inventive and vivid with natural imagery." – Carol Ann Duffy