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?

Agamemnon must sacrifice his daughter, Clytemnestra must try to stop him, Iphigenia must accept her fate, the Chorus must watch.Ships lie dormant in harbours, and thousands of troops sit on the shore, growing restless and unruly. Helen is gone, and pursuit of her has been stalled by windless seas. To raise the winds to send his fleet to Troy, Agamemnon is commanded by the gods to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia. But his deceit of his wife, Clytemnestra and the killing of his chil...

A darkly hilarious and unflinching exploration of the human psyche in the modern world.In These Days of Prohibition, Caroline Bird delves into the badlands of the human psyche with her signature blend of poetic and vulgar registers. Shifting between surreal imagery and telling social commentary, Bird's poems hold their subjects in an unflinching grip, asking what it is that keeps us alive.These are days of intoxication and inebriation, rehab in a d...

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...

'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 ...

A formidable collection from a singular voice in British poetry.Caroline Bird, Forward Prize winner and one of Carcanet's most popular poets, presents a selection of her best work from the past two decades. Starting with Looking through Letterboxes written when she was just fifteen, this collection showcases her startling instinct for metaphor and courageous exploration of complex subjects.Rookie offers a journey through Bird's energetic a...

Sassy freelance journalist Courtney Frome is on assignment counting bathrooms for the property pages. For Courtney the world of expansive bay views and renovator's delights is just another job... until Lizzy Candy is discovered dead in her spa while Courtney is inspecting the Candy mansion. Lizzie's faithless husband is a big player in real estate. But is he the obvious answer to the obvious question? Then a second body is discovered at another prestige address...

'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 ...

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.

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...

Based on ten years of surveys and excavations in Nyiyaparli country in the eastern Chichester Ranges, north-west Australia, Crafting Country provides a unique synthesis of Holocene archaeology in the Pilbara region. The analysis of about 1000 sites, including surface artefact scatters and 19 excavated rock shelters, as well as thousands of isolated artefacts, takes a broad view of the landscape, examining the distribution of archaeological remains in time and space. Heritage compl...

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?