*A great performer on page and stage, Caroline - poet and dramatist - in her fifth collection pretends to set her satiric weaponry aside to seek 'simple truth'*In the badlands of the human psyche, she finds more than we bargained for. As always she is a poet of uncontrolled hilarity and telling social comment*Caroline was twice shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and won an Eric Gregory Award*Her first Carcanet collection was published in 2002 when she was 14 years old. She lives in London

Shortlisted for the 2017 Ted Hughes Award. Shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize. In These Days of Prohibition is Caroline Bird's fifth Carcanet collection. As always, she is a poet of dark hilarity and telling social comment. Shifting between poetic and vulgar registers, the surreal imagery of her early work is re-deployed to venture into the badlands of the human psyche. Her poems hold their subjects in an unflinching grip, addressing faces behind the veneer, asking what it is that keeps us alive. These days of prohibition are days of intoxication and inebriation, rehab in a desert and adultery for atheists, until finally Bird edges us out of danger, `revving on a wish'.