Ambush at Still Lake

Caroline Bird has seven previous volumes published by Carcanet. Her sixth collection, The Air Year, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2020 and was shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Costa Prize. Her fifth collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. A two-time winner of the Foyles Young Poets Award, her first collection Looking Through Letterboxes was published in 2002 when she was 15. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001 and the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010. She was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics.In 2023, she won a Cholmondeley Award. Her Selected Poems, Rookie, was published in 2022.

'These poems are skillfully written. They are full of conceits, taken to logical and comic lengths until they reveal the absurdities in everyday life. Whether talking about children, love or death, the way Bird takes words literally and to extremes triggers the laughter muscle. Yet, like all good comedy writing, the poems possess grains of truth that make the reader reflect on the human experience. A great collection, and a most enjoyable read.'Rennie Halstead, London Grip