Our usual host, Sam Tongue, puts two poems by the wonderful Yorkshire poet Caroline Bird, under the groupchat microscope. Caroline Bird has published eight collections of poetry to date; usually to great acclaim, awards and rave reviews. Her latest collection, Ambush at Still Lake (Carcanet) has her trademark surreal wit, and is a kaleidoscope of startling imagery, lyrical unexpectedness, and is typically hard to classify, but so easy to fall in love with. UK Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage said of her: "Bird is irrepressible; she simply explodes with poetry. The work erupts, spring-loaded, funny, sad, deadly - you don't know if a bullet will come out of the barrel or a flag with the word BANG on it." Sam Tongue took his customary immersive dive into two poems from Ambush at Still Lake: RSVP and Cuckoo. Find out what Sam - and the Friends Of The SPL group - got from these poems in our Nothing But The Poem podcast.

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