Polly Clark

Polly Clark is the author of three novels and four collections of poetry, most recently Afterlife: New and Selected Poems and the novel Ocean. Her books have taken readers from W. H. Auden’s Helensburgh to the Russian taiga and across the Atlantic in a small sailing boat, and explore both human and animal lives in extremis.

Her third novel, Ocean (Eye Books, 2025), follows a traumatised family fleeing the aftermath of a terrorist explosion on the London Underground by attempting to cross the Atlantic together. Louis de Bernières described it as “strange, wonderful and compelling”, while The Irish Times praised its exploration of “the deep weirdness of grief and trauma”.

Her first novel, Larchfield (Quercus, 2017), reimagined a little-known period in the life of W. H. Auden and won the Mslexia Novel Prize. Her second, Tiger (Quercus, 2019), was inspired by a journey into the Russian taiga in search of the endangered Amur tiger and was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year.

Afterlife: New and Selected Poems was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2026. Clark won an Eric Gregory Award for her first collection, Kiss, and her second, Take Me With You, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.