Caroline Bird online with Home Stage

Poet Caroline Bird joins Home Stage online for a reading from her most recent book with Manchester’s Carcanet Press, The Air Year, winner of the prestigious Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2020. Currently on the shortlist for the Polari Prize Book Of The Year (the UK’s only literary awards for LGBTQ+ literature, with the winner due to be announced on 30 October) this event will also feature an exclusive interview with Caroline discussing the book and her life as a poet.

The Air Year not only won the Forward, it was also shortlisted for the Costa Prize and it was book of the month in The Telegraph and book of the year in The Guardian.

Award-winning poet and playwright Caroline grew up in Leeds, daughter of noted theatre-director and producer Jude Kelly, and now lives in London. Caroline has six collections of poetry published by Carcanet; The Air Year not only won the Forward, it was also shortlisted for the Costa Prize and it was book of the month in The Telegraph and book of the year in The Guardian.

Her fifth collection, In These Days Of Prohibition, was shortlisted for the 2017 TS Eliot Prize and the Ted Hughes Award. A two-time winner of the Foyles Young Poets Award, her first collection Looking Through Letterboxes was published in 2002 when she was just 15. Caroline 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 is one of the judges for the 2021 TS Eliot Prize.

If you like the sound of this event, check out Polari First Book-winning poet Andrew McMillan streaming live from Leeds’ independent queer bookshop The Bookish Type on 17 August.

For book-buying opportunities in Leeds, find out more about the regular Leeds Record & Book Fair at Kirkgate Market.