POLLY CLARK

March 3, 2018

Larchfield – Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month

Published in paperback March 8th, Larchfield has been chosen by Waterstones as their Scottish Book of the Month. This is very exciting, showing that the story still resonates a year after first publication and my vision of a miraculous encounter between a depressed mother and WH Auden in the Scottish town of Helensburgh continues to…

The tiger we caught on camera!

Glimpsing the elusive Siberian tiger is all about skilled tracking to find out where their favourite spots are and then setting camera traps in the right locations around these areas. Alexander, the owner of the reserve at Durmin, recently collected this film from one of the traps we set on our trip in November. This…

December 13, 2017

CSI Tiger: tracks, corpse, invisible perpetrator!

The evidence is everywhere: tracks, paw prints, blood spots, body imprints. Deep in the forest the detective work begins. Paw prints are measured to determine the tiger’s size, and whether it is male or female. The way the print appears in the snow gives valuable clues as to when the tiger passed by. Often the…

December 11, 2017

Tiger prints in the Siberian snow…

The tracks, body imprints and grisly kills of wild Siberian tigers surrounded me. Every morning in Durminskoye Reserve in the Far East new tracks criss-crossed the perfect snow. The tracks were so fresh it was clear that tigers had patrolled their territories through the night within a couple of kilometres of where I slept. Deeper…

November 12, 2017

Siberian tiger tracking… the preparations

Two weeks today I will be airborne on my way to Moscow, then Khabarovsk, then deep into the taiga of the Far East… a long journey undertaken in order to track the majestic Siberian tiger. A small group of us, along with a guide, translator and cook will spend our days in temperatures of up…

October 9, 2017

Creative Scotland funding award for TIGER

I’m thrilled to announce that Creative Scotland have generously awarded funds towards my epic tiger tracking expedition taking place this winter. This trip is research for my second novel TIGER. Not a natural traveller, I am getting both apprehensive and excited as the moment approaches to don my super insulated costume and head for Siberia.…

September 27, 2017

BBC2 WH Auden film featuring Larchfield

STOP ALL THE CLOCKS: WH Auden in an Age of Anxiety, a new film by Adam Low. The film features the following writers and poets: Alan Bennett, Polly Clark (that’s me! Among icons!), Richard Curtis, James Fenton, Alexander McCall Smith and Paul Muldoon sharing our passion for Auden’s work and his enduring appeal. I posted HERE…

August 13, 2017

Edinburgh Book Festival: Maps for Lost Lovers

Tuesday August 15th, 10.15am in the Speigeltent with Annalena McAfee, author of HAME…. So excited to be appearing here! Two novels, set on the west coast of Scotland, explore how the imagination connects writers of different generations. In Hame, Annalena McAfee’s heroine Mhairi McPhail moves to the remote Scottish island of Fascaray to write a…

July 29, 2017

Society of Authors funding award for Tiger novel

Siberia here I come! Thanks to a generous award from the Society of Authors I will, this winter, be tracking Siberian tigers in a remote region of the Amur, part of the research for my second novel TIGER. Thank you SoA for making my dream possible. More detail to come!

July 20, 2017

Larchfield Paperback Cover

Even though the paperback is not published until March next year, I can’t contain my excitement about the cover! Publishing my debut novel has demonstrated many times over how much top flight creative talent goes into making a book what it is (not my talent, I hasten to add: another key realisation is that my…