Caroline Bird, born in 1986, is not a poet who shies away from the dark and difficult. Her eighth poetry collection, In These Days of...

Oh Hamlet, my lord, a pleasure it is to drown thee. I mourned for thy madness – no more. My father pierced, myself scorned, a daughter’s...

Skin-to-tarmac, I feel liminal. A touch of tyre on my lips and oil on my chin, my hands plunge through the tainted asphalt. Beneath, I...

Y’know, mate, that brings to mind a word I read, from Attic Greek, an ancient text, spoken right with a tap, no voice, on teeth. – that...

With regret, Mr Bezos, blasting up for a ten-minute stint doesn’t net you fresh wings. Yours were of a weaker print (cardboard mesh and...

I turn, not to see your face again, but to watch the look of surprise, the wide eyes, the sagging jaw, as you realise, too late, that I...

Those voluptuous grey walnuts, ‘mousebrains’, we called them: tasted by salacious gondii. We unfurl these ripened fruits. Paths leading...

I see, beyond the fray, a face like mine. Over the flailing limbs, the weeping eyes, the gnashing teeth, I see that face. The floor slick...

You slipped mid-swing. He pitched (mistake) you far, out, straight out, into the dark. You spun (i think) then skimmed (i swear), twice,...

‘Ticket for one’, he said: no childish grin. Just sat the cash, in coppers, on open skin. Sweating, fretting, Trench-coat stumbles to the...