Matt Simpson, www.Stridemagazine.co.uk

...let's start with a firework display. Caroline Bird's Trouble Came to the Turnip is a second collection from someone still only nineteen. It is like nothing I've read before. At times surreal, hallucinatory, playful, always vividly imaginative, yet controlled, in a way I can't quite put my finger on - the poems somehow feel 'achieved', somehow make us aware of a genuinely serious shaping spirit behind the highly entertaining flights of fancy Bird enjoys and allows herself. These are remarkable poems and, if anything (though it would be wrong to claim direct influence), they remind me of the verbal exuberance of the young Dylan Thomas. Caroline Bird has given the language of poetry a real shot in the arm.