Herbert Lomas, Ambit 188, Spring 2007

Caroline Bird is twenty-one, and this is her second book. She writes brilliantly, passionately and with humour about everything from money to opera, which she's evidently absorbed a lot of already, as of life. But it's clearly the search for love under the pressure of adolescent hormones that obsesses her. There's no beating about any kind of bush, or prissiness about speech: 'It takes more than pants and zips/ to hide my cunt, it yells in its sleep...'

The title poem's about fleeing from trouble with 'my love'. It's a nursery-rhyme in structure and style. Escape is attempted in everything from a cabbage-cart and a sewage pipe to the inside of a rat. None of this works, leading to prison, the madhouse and other nasty places, including the soup. But some relief comes at the end, perhaps because she's chosen the turnip-lorry, rather than the original cabbage-cart:

When trouble came to the village
I put my love in the turnip-lorry
and we sneaked, wrapped in turnip,
a hurried kiss.

The last poem in the book also chooses a homely comestible for love:

I wish
to cherish you, or Larry, or anyone
with a blind bread love
that is fresh and plain
and steady on the stomach...

But it's going to be a long search through some rough territory, often feeling like a frog - 'every lover she meets has a different slime' - and includes a lament for lost virginity:

If I was a virgin I could wear white in winter,
read your dirty magazines with a shy and puzzled look,
like I didn't know a crotch from a coffe-table...
...you'd spend the night on the sofa,
dreaming of the gentle way I breathed inside my bra,
my nightgown would remind you of fragrant summer orchards...

There's not a dull poem here. She's brainy, carries her culture casually, is never at a loss for a phrase or an image and can slip convincingly and revealingly into the surreal. The poet's so alive, and living so intensely, the only worry is she'll burn herself out. This is a great talent whom I recommend you enjoy straight away at its second pressing.