Writing lyrically about her feelings, emotions and life’s fleeting moments over 10 years meant former East Londoner Micharn Pollock produced a collection of 100 poems which has now been published in a book called A Long Look in the Mirror.
Pollock, who matriculated at DSG before obtaining a business science degree from UCT, lives in Cape Town where she spends time writing, acting, painting and modelling and has been a familiar face in television adverts.
“This book is a collection of poems that I wrote over 10 years,” she says. “There would be times where I would be writing all day long for days and then months of just thinking and not writing a thing.
Writing a poetry book was not something I was planning on during that time.
“In about 2002 I had a New York literary agent and had a poem published in an American anthology but then I decided to take time off from writing. It was only when I had a collection of about 100 poems that I decided to show them to Europe Books and they offered to publish my book.”
Pollock’s editor has poetically described the collection as “all the feelings that can have a place in a human soul remain stuck to the author’s blank canvas like insects enveloped in a sweetish substance.
"The transience of feelings becomes eternal concreteness. She explores the beauty and frailty of humanity in the midst of our messy world, in the middle of our chaotic lives”.
A Long Look in the Mirror was published shortly before the author’s beloved mother Jan Pollock of local East London’s Pollock’s Photography passed away suddenly in August.
And although her mother never got to hold a copy of the book, she contributed valuable insights into its creation.
“My mother’s ceramics and prints are exquisite. She showed me all about colouring outside the lines, about finding my voice. My book was published while my parents were away on a trip in Zimbabwe and so unfortunately my mother never got to hold a printed copy, but she was very much a part of the process along the way — giving her advice on the cover, questioning my message in some of my poems and often being someone who would just listen as I read. This was something that she was so incredible at — just listening.”
Her father, well known photographer Rob Pollock was also an inspiration.
