The Hat-Stand Union

'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