Clare Pollard was born in Bolton in 1978 and currently lives in East London.  She has published three collections with Bloodaxe: The Heavy-Petting Zoo (1998), Bedtime (2002) and Look, Clare! Look! (2005). Her first play The Weather (Faber, 2004) premièred at the Royal Court Theatre. She works as an editor, broadcaster and teacher.  Her recent documentary for radio, My Male Muse (2007), was a Radio 4 Pick of the Year, and she is a Royal Literary Fund Literary Fellow at Essex University. She is co-editor, with James Byrne, of the anthology Voice Recognition: 21 poets for the 21st century (Bloodaxe Books, 2009).