Description

Shortlisted for the Polari Book Prize 2021.
Winner of the 2020 Forward Prize for Best Collection.
Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award 2020.
A Telegraph Poetry Book of the Month (February 2020).
A Telegraph Book of the Year 2020.
A Guardian Book of the Year 2020.

The Air Year is a time of flight, transition and suspension: signatures scribbled on the sky. Bird’s speakers exist in a state of unrest, trapped in a liminal place between take-off and landing, undeniably lost. Love is uncontrollable, joy comes and goes at hurricane speed. They walk to the cliff edge, close their eyes and step out into the air.

Caroline Bird has five previous collections published by Carcanet. Her fifth collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award.

Publisher Review

'Bird is a master of bleak humour interlaced with wry social commentary' - Poetry London; '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 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