Book description
Caroline Bird's two earlier collections were acclaimed for their
exuberant energy, surreal imagination and passion -- 'a bit of a Howl
for a new generation', wrote the Hudson Review. Watering Can
celebrates life as an early twenty-something. The poems, writes
Caroline Bird, 'contain prophetic videos, a moon colonised by bullies,
weeping scholars, laughing ducks, silent weddings -- all the
fertiliser that pours on top of your head.' The extraordinary verve
and compassion of her verse propels us into the anxiety of new
responsibilities. Raw but never hopeless, Watering Can has comedy,
wordplay and bright self-deprecation.
Caroline Bird was born in 1986. She grew up in Leeds and attended
school in York before moving to London in 2001. She won the Poetry
Society's Simon Elvin Young Poet of the Year Award two years running
(1999 and 2000) and won an Eric Gregory Award in 2002. Her poems have
appeared in PN Review, Poetry Review, The North magazine and in
Carcanet's New Poetries III anthology (2002). Her first collection,
Looking Through Letterboxes, was published by Carcanet in 2002. Her
second collection, Trouble Came to the Turnip, appeared in September
2006. Caroline has given poetry readings at the Royal Festival Hall,
Cheltenham Festival and Ledbury Festival. Her poems and a
specially-commissioned short story, Sucking Eggs, have been broadcast on
Radio Four. In Autumn 2008 Caroline was shortlisted for the prestigious
Dylan Thomas Prize for writers under 30.
