“Poetry doesn’t ask you how old you are at the door”, says Caroline Bird, reflecting on the fact that her first collection, Looking at Letterboxes, was published when she was aged just 15. Since then, Caroline has authored four more collections, won numerous awards, and been the official poet of the London Olympics – great hallmarks indeed, but in this conversation with Suzannah V. Evans, recorded at StAnza Poetry Festival in 2019, she reveals why her poetry can also be identified by analogy with a frozen duck.

Caroline reads three poems at the end of the podcast: ‘A Peace of Stained Glass in a Lonely Church’, ‘The University Poetry Society’, and ‘Patient Intake Questionnaire’.

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Caroline Bird author photo credit: Fabrice Gagos