In These Days of Prohibition

Bird Caroline

In "These Days of Prohibition" is Caroline Bird's fifth Carcanet collection. As always, she is a poet of dark hilarity and telling social comment. Shifting between poetic and vulgar registers, the surreal imagery of her early work is re-deployed to venture into the badlands of the human psyche. Her poems hold their subjects in an unflinching grip, addressing faces behind the veneer, asking what it is that keeps us alive. These days of prohibition are days of intoxication and inebriation, rehab in a desert and adultery for atheists, until finally Bird edges us out of danger, "revving on a wish".

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

"Her poems burst with linguistic energy" – Stephen Knight, Times Literary Supplement

"An astonishingly assured piece of work" – Ruth Padel, Financial Times

"What an original captivating and spellbinding voice. Bird is fearless like 'the girl who dropped her ice-cream down a volcano and leaped in after it'. She'€™s dangerous and witty too with a rare quality of imagination. This is a wonder, a beautifully written book of poems" – Lemn Sissay

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