Ambush at Still Lake

A Telegraph Book of the Year 2024A Financial Times Poetry Book of the Year 2024Caroline Bird's new poems show us the ambush of real life that occurs in the stillness after the happy ending. This is a collection about marriage, lesbian parenthood, addiction and recovery in which a recurring dream is playing out: a world where mums impale themselves on pogo-sticks, serial killers rattle around in basements, baby monitors are haunted by someone else's baby and, through it all, love stays and stays like a stationary rollercoaster that turns out to be the scariest, most thrilling ride in the amusement park. Her editor welcomed the book in these terms: 'It is bleak, repellent and hilarious in an American Psycho-ish way.

Hectic and vivid.' 'Vegetable crisps. The words yawn like a black hole, sucking my eyes backwards into my head until I see my own brain glowing like a radioactive cauliflower.'