The Air Year

by Caroline Bird

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784109028
Publisher:	Carcanet Press, Limited
Publication date:	04/30/2020
Pages:	64
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Caroline Bird is a poet and playwright. She has five previous collections of poetry published by Carcanet. Her most recent collection, In These Days of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. A two-time winner of the Foyle Young Poets Award, her first collection Looking Through Letterboxes was published in 2002 when she was 15. She won an Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001 and the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010. She was shortlisted for Most Promising New Playwright at the Off-West-End Awards, and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her theatre credits include: The Trojan Women (Gate Theatre, 2012), The Trial of Dennis the Menace (Purcell Room, 2012), Chamber Piece (Lyric Hammersmith, 2013), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Northern Stage, 2015), and The Iphigenia Quartet (Gate Theatre, 2016). She was one of the five official poets at the 2012 London Olympics.

Table of Contents

Mid-air 9

Dive Bar 10

Nancy and the Torpedo 12

Sincerely 15

Checkout 16

Temporary Vows 17

The Red Telephone 19

The Deadness 21

The Ground 22

Urban Myth 23

The Girl Who Cried Love 24

I Am Not a Falconer 25

The Final Episode 26

Naphthalene Heights 28

Speechless 31

The Insurmountables 32

Circles 33

Rope Bridges 34

Sanity 35

Surrealism for Beginners 36

Rookie 38

Little Children 39

Emotional Reasoning 41

Fridge 43

Anaesthetic 44

Flicker 46

Drawn Onward 47

The Golden Age 48

Morality Play 50

Prepper 52

It Sneaks Up on You 53

Fancy Dress 54

The Tree Room 57

The Factory Floor 59

Loveborough 61

Primitive Heart 63

Acknowledgements 64