Caroline Bird has achieved many an accolade for her poetry already from her elders, the most notable being an Eric Gregory Award in 2002,  and for such a young poet this is an impressive achievement.The blurb on the back cover of this her second collection describes her as ‘a vivid and precocious new talent’. This is certainly true as this series of poems is riddled with such striking imagery that the reader sometimes might find it hard to believe that someone not even in her twenties could have written them.

    ‘What I would say with flowers,/if the flowers didn’t speak so strange./I gather
    nettles with love.’

These poems sting, the attitude and tone is fierce and there is often macabre humour that can at times make the poet appear hostile. One might go as far as to say that in many of these poems she is in a state of provocation, in a possible attempt to illustrate how tough she has to be as a young woman in the modern world.  It appears though that this may be a defence against letting the reader gain an insight into the true ‘personality’ of the poet.  There are, however, some wonderful experiences recorded in poems such as ‘This Time Last Week’, ‘Virgin’, ‘Mope’, and ‘It Will Come to Pass’.  The true wonder in this collection is in the vignettes which utilise all her fantastical imagery to best effect; poems such as ‘Mary Jane’, ‘Board Rubber Dust’, ‘War Poem’, ‘The Fairy Is Bored with Her Garden’, and ‘The Lady with the Lamp’, are short stories that draw the reader in and do not disappoint, as displays of her tenacity they are a sheer delight.

Caroline Bird’s poems are often surreal in their nature and seem to strive to obtain a sense of otherworldliness.  But when attempting to achieve a sense of otherworldliness should the poet not be acutely aware that although her imagination can enter, explore, and examine the realms of fantasy, the poet is also physically rooted in the modern world, with which her reader’s natural sensations are preoccupied? I am all for poetry attuning itself to a state of the unexplainable, the excitement of the mysterious, and I appreciate poets who take on the poetic test of attributing a description or image to a sensation or vision that appears indescribable or unfathomable, but in the case of Caroline Bird the images are often so surreal that they are impenetrable to the reader, difficult to decipher in relation to the poem as a whole entity.

The poems are without question the work of a poet who is adept and dynamic in her use of language, and the poems stand as testament to her ability to provide music for the ear.  The diction, rhythm, and cadence are nearly flawless throughout, but the sticking point once again is that the images can inhibit and muddle the clear direction some of the poems are intending to take. It can often appear that there is no cohesion between the lines and images as they move in succession.  This is not to say that there are not some mesmerizing lines in this collection.  The problem with some of the poems is that because there are often so many wildly fantastical images coupled with an apparent lack of cohesion, the reader’s attention is deflected from the overall sensation or perception the poem is attempting to convey; the images detract from each other and dilute the poem’s powers to attract and seduce the reader.

Robert Frost asserted that ‘to write poetry without form is like playing tennis with the net down’,  and, indeed, in this collection there is no real use of form; not a clear cut sonnet in sight, in fact there are no significantly recognisable forms to be found.  This is not necessarily a bad thing (and certainly not when considering Caroline Bird’s natural poetic talents), but to be able to write free verse one must be fully aware of its pitfalls.

Caroline Bird has a very keen sense of enjambment which means there is rarely a weak line ending in her collection. However, the poems are very long; the vast majority of them are the full length of a page, sometimes spilling out onto a second, third and fourth page. I am curious to know how competent the poet is at controlling her voice, in that the poems seem to pour out with a relentless energy that can clearly compromise the poems.  Bird may well learn to conquer this as she gets older, and more practised in harnessing her expression. Then again this could just be her style. If it is her style, and not just youthful exuberance, then so be it, but I feel the poems would benefit a great deal from being much more economical in their expression.

Given the length of the poems and their ‘liberal’ structures, I was reminded of the wise words of W.H. Auden: ‘Rhymes, metres, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice: if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest. The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself.’

Overall, this is a fine collection of poems for a nineteen year old to have produced. The book is full of amazing images and stunning lines such as ‘watching toothless men eat yoghurt with their mouths open’, ‘the sun comes down/like a massive lid’, ‘shouting men with beards are priceless fountains’. Bird’s collection exudes confidence and is confrontational at times, but I would encourage readers to contend with her and her immediacy, for she is a truly contemporary poet who can only prove herself more and more given time.

Trouble Came to the Turnip, Carcanet, £9.95, ISBN 1 857548 87 6

Robert Herbert was a student at this year’s Tower Poetry Summer School. He has just finished an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

The views expressed by contributors to the reviews section of Poetry Matters are not those of Tower Poetry, or of Christ Church, Oxford, and are solely those of the reviewers.