The Hat-Stand Union caroline bird is an award-winning poet. She won a major Eric Gregory Award in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize in 2001. Her first collection, Looking Through Letterboxes, was published in 2002 (when she was just fifteen). She was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2008 and 2010 for her second and third collections, Trouble Came to the Turnip and Watering Can (which received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation), on both occasions being the youngest writer on the list. She was one of the five official poets for the London 2012 Olympics; her poem ‘The Fun Palace’, which celebrates the life and work of Joan Littlewood, is now erected on the Olympic site outside the main stadium.

She is also a playwright. In February 2012 her children’s musical The Trial of Dennis the Menace was premiered at the Southbank Centre, and in the autumn her radical new version of Euripides’ The Trojan Women enjoyed a seven-week run at the Gate Theatre, to wide critical acclaim.