Playful in earnest, Caroline Bird in her fourth book of poems turns familiar stories on their heads. Adrift in a surreal world of the everyday, Bird's protagonists declaim Chekhov in supermarkets, purchase mail-order tears, sing love-songs to hat-stands. At the centre of the collection Bird evokes the sinister side of Camelot, haunted by the experiments of its crazed tyrant-king. Bird's characters and voices are at once savvy and vulnerable; underlying the exuberance is empathy with those who have lost themselves somewhere along the way. The everyday world of "The Hat-Stand Union" is beautiful, ominous and full of surprise.
About the Author
Caroline Bird is an award-winning poet. She won a major Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was short-listed for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001. Her first collection, "Looking Through Letterboxes", was published by Carcanet Press in 2002, when she was just fifteen. She was short-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010 for her second and third collections, "Trouble Came To The Turnip", and "Watering Can", and was the youngest writer on the list both times. "Watering Can" achieved a "Poetry Book Society Recommendation". She was one of the five official poets at London Olympics 2012. Her poem, "The Fun Palace" which celebrates the life and work of Joan Littlewood, is now erected on the Olympic Site outside the main stadium. Her fourth poetry collection, "The Hat-stand Union", will be published in 2013. She is also a playwright: her children's musical, "The Trial of Dennis the Menace", was performed at the Southbank Centre in February 2012. This autumn, her bold new version of Euripides's "The Trojan Women" premiered at the Gate Theatre.
Reviews
"Bird is irrepressible; she simply explodes with poetry. The work erupts, spring-loaded, funny, sad, deadly – you don't know if a bullet will come out of the barrel or a flag with the word BANG on it" – Simon Armitage
"Caroline Bird has always written wise, bitterly funny and intellectually bracing poems.What has developed over the course of four collections is a voice heartbreaking in vision while simultaneously consoling in its constant and inspired invention" – Luke Kennard
"A carnival of characters spills out of these poems, chased by paparazzi, doing somersaults and cartwheels with language... Caroline Bird puts us on the inside looking deeper in, under the glittering skin to the place where laughter begins, where mothers are children, where people feel pain and speak in tongues, where tongues are knives and 'Someone still has to stay here and die'" – Imtiaz Dharker
Shortlisted for the 2008 Dylan Thomas Prize for young writers
Shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001
Winner of the Peterloo Poets Competition (16-19 year-olds) in 2002, 2003 and 2004
Winner of an Eric Gregory Award in 2002
Winner of the Simon Elvin Young Poet of the Year Award in 1999 and 2000
Commended in the 2004 Christopher Tower Poetry Prize with "The Softness of the Morning"
