Until recently, a wedding was no place for reinvention: everything from the location to the outfits to the language of the ceremony was decided by our particular cultures, religions and social expectations of gender and domestic roles; and of course, many of us were unable to get married at all. Now gay marriage is legal in Britain; heterosexual couples can have civil partnerships; we can get hitched in a yurt or a cave or on a rollercoaster.But the old traditions die hard, and des...

Longlisted for the Polari Book Prize 2023Caroline Bird is one of Carcanet's most popular poets. Her startling instinct for metaphor, the courage of her choice of subjects and the integrity of her witness, set her apart: a poem is a risk, and it has to be a risk worth taking for the poet and for the reader.Starting with Looking through Letterboxes in 2002 when she was fifteen years old, she has published six Carcanet books, culminating in The Ai...

'A working-class woman inside the walls of Westminster? If that is not espionage, I do not know what is.'Forever on the right side of history, but on the wrong side of life, Labour MP Ellen Wilkinson is caught between revolutionary and parliamentary politics as she fights for a better world.Battling to save Jewish refugees in Nazi Germany; campaigning for Britain to aid the fight against Franco's Fascists in Spain; leading two hundred workers in the Jarrow Crusade ...

What sort of life would you live if you no longer feared the dying process? Do you want to understand?? Where do we go when we die?? How does the crossover happen?? Can our loved ones in spirit make contact with us?? Should we be afraid of dying, and what happens next?Life, Death, and the Birth of Truth is a journey through Caroline Byrds experiences as she communicates and works with souls and spirit on both sides of the veil.Life,...

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, add...

A Telegraph Book of the Year 2024A Financial Times Poetry Book of the Year 2024Caroline Bird's new poems show us the ambush of real life that occurs in the stillness after the happy ending. This is a collection about marriage, lesbian parenthood, addiction and recovery in which a recurring dream is playing out: a world where mums impale themselves on pogo-sticks, serial killers rattle around in basements, baby monitors are ...

'And what happens when the pendulum swings too far? We push back.'In the 1970s, one enigmatic old lady wielded extraordinary influence, fighting against what she believed was the UK's moral decline. Armed with only a typewriter, this seemingly harmless grandmother took on the BBC and the 'godless media' in a culture war that divided the nation.Inspired by real events, Caroline Bird's wickedly funny play delves into Whitehouse's most explosive battle – her infamous ...

In this pitch-black comedy, fatal chemicals combine with ruthless ambition, biscuits, bureaucracy and moral ambiguity. Set in the near future, Britain has reinstated the death penalty. Relatives are weeping in the witness gallery, the journalist clicks her pen and the prison governor gives the thumbs up. Rapist murderer Richard Sanger is strapped to the gurney. Chamber Piece depicts a modern, British execution. How would it look? How would we feel? And what could possibly go wrong?

In this pitch-black comedy, fatal chemicals combine with ruthless ambition, biscuits, bureaucracy and moral ambiguity. Set in the near future, Britain has reinstated the death penalty. Relatives are weeping in the witness gallery, the journalist clicks her pen and the prison governor gives the thumbs up. Rapist murderer Richard Sanger is strapped to the gurney. Chamber Piece depicts a modern, British execution. How would it look? How would we feel? And what could possibly go wrong?

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 inebria...

The Air Year is a time of flight, transition, and suspension: the shrill air as you fall through love, before crash, comedown—commitment. The poet crosses challenging threshholds: fear of commitment, of motherhood, shame, and panic. 'I am proficient at beginnings,' Caroline Bird says. This book goes further and (with her characteristic energy and exuberance) risks the next level. People run on treadmills facing blue walls, burn talismans in their gardens, and mime marriage with in...

An angry orphan escapes a grey town on the back of a hurricane. She lands in a mysterious country of tiny people and wicked witches, where the trees carry bazookas, the crows recite slam poetry, and a mouse can blow your head off.In just one day, this little girl revolutionizes an entire nation. She brings freedom, and colour. Her name is DOROTHY.