In These Days of Prohibition
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Shortlisted for the 2017 Ted Hughes Award. Shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize. 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'.
Caroline Bird is an award-winning poet. Her first collection Looking Through Letterboxes was published in 2002 when she was 15. Her second collection, Trouble Came to the Turnip, was published in September 2006 to critical acclaim. Watering Can (2009) achieved a 'Poetry Book Society Recommendation' and her fourth collection, The Hat-Stand Union, (2013) was described by Simon Armitage as 'spring-loaded, funny, sad and deadly.' She won a major Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was short-listed for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001. She was short-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010. 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 still erected on the Olympic Site outside the main stadium. She is also a playwright. Her new version of The Trojan Women premiered at the Gate Theatre in 2012. Her original play, Chamber Piece, was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn prize 2014, and toured as part of Lyric Hammersmith's Secret Theatre season. In 2013, she was short-listed for Most Promising New Playwright at the Off-West-End Awards. She wrote a radical new adaptation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for Northern Stage in 2015. She is currently writing the book and lyrics for Dennis the Menace The Musical for the Old Vic.