Caroline Bird

Haha this was not the demographic I was expecting. I did terribly on my physics GSCE. I love the idea of forklift truck drivers reading my poetry, I hope that’s true.

Boom! Omg was it really five years ago? Wow. Your absolute love and talent for poetry was so clear from the beginning. Chanel’s loss was poetry’s gain. x

Final night of “The Last Stand of Mary Whitehouse” by @carolinebirduk.bsky.social . I doubt there’s any tickets left but it’s a fantastic play. Maxine Peake and Samuel Barnett are superb. Let’s hope there will be another run.

Ah thank you Rosie, so happy you enjoyed it!

Ah thank you Gillian, I’m so glad you enjoyed it - Maxine and Sam are incredible

Top photo: Maxine Peake in The Last Stand of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse at Nottingham Playhouse. Photo by Helen Murray. Bottom photo: Playscript cover of The Last Stand of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse by Caroline Bird.

'Incredibly powerful'
★★★★★ WhatsOnStage

'Witty and timely'
★★★★ Guardian

The Last Stand of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse by NHB author Caroline Bird is now on @nottmplayhouse.bsky.social.

Get your playscript copy at the venue or online: www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/the-last-sta...

Maxine Peake playing Mrs Mary Whitehouse

If there are ANY tickets left for this, I advise you to snap em up.

Standing ovation on the first night.

It’s feckin brilliant.

Caroline Bird’s THE LAST STAND OF MRS MARY WHITEHOUSE

nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/events/the-l...

Starring Maxine Peake and Samuel Barnett.

Mind blowing.

A woman, wearing a blue quilted coat and pink rollneck with dark glasses, stands between two theatre curtains, holding them open. She has a frown on her face and is looking off to the left.

A garden shed against a blue backdrop on a stage. Standing in front of it a woman wearing a blue cardigan, pink rollneck and patterned skirt. She is pointing one finger up and looking upwards with a smile on her face.

A man wearing a silk gown and hair wrap, and a woman wearing a long navy coat and matching hat sit, opposite one another at a wooden dining table. They are staring intently at each other, with the man reaching out one arm across the table in an attempt to reach the woman’s hand.

👓 Take a first look at The Last Stand of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse, with our fabulous production photos.

💐 Sending love and best wishes to our wonderful cast, creatives and crew for press night tonight.

📷 Helen Murray

Writer @Carolinebirduk.bsky.social

‘The one thing it doesn’t have is actual sex’: the new Mary Whitehouse play that would have infuriated Mary Whitehouse She was the morality crusader who became a figure of ridicule. Now Whitehouse is the subject of a new production starring Maxine Peake. We meet the gay feminist playwright who wrote it

‘The one thing it doesn’t have is actual sex’: the new Mary Whitehouse play that would have infuriated Mary Whitehouse

A woman with blond hair in a ponytail, glasses and wearing a pink t-shirt sits on a 1970s floral garden chair. She holds a folder in her lap, raises her left hand to her chin and looks off, a distant look on her face.

A man and woman, both wearing pale pink t-shirts, sit opposite each other on wooden chairs, holding hands. They both look out. In front of them, a woman in a blue shirt sits in a chair, leaning toward them.

A man in a pink t-shirt and glasses crouches sits sideways on the floor. He is frowning and looks off camera, concerned.

Straight from rehearsals, brand-new photos of world premiere The Last Stand of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse.

Starring Maxine Peake & Samuel Barnett, @carolinebirduk.bsky.social’s wickedly funny new play about a highly controversial figure.

bit.ly/NPMaryWhiteh...

📆 Fri 5 – Sat 27 Sep
📷 @helenmurraypix

Amtssprache So what would you pay to have your family safe In that house with the garden and the clean running water - And you walk in and hold them and kiss their faces? Your life? Too easy, and nobody’s asking. How about the life of an Afghan child, A city, the birds in the sky? Would you turn a blind eye? Would you turn off the news? Would you run the trains to death camps? Of course you would. You do. You do these things. (Poem by Clare Pollard)

Samuel Barnett to join Maxine Peake in The Last Stand of Mrs Mary Whitehouse | West End Theatre Final casting has been announced for The Last Stand of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse at Nottingham Playhouse.

Samuel Barnett to join Maxine Peake in The Last Stand of Mrs Mary Whitehouse

Read more: www.westendtheatre.com/297883/news/...

#MaxinePeake to star as Mary Whitehouse, with #SamuelBarnett playing 15 other roles

By Caroline Bird, directed by Sarah Frankcom

#NottinghamPlayhouse from 5 – 27 Sept

Final 20 tickets for our 11 June @queer-poetry-co.bsky.social evening with @carolinebirduk.bsky.social Richard Scott, Sophie Robinson and Roberto Salvador Cenciarelli x

It’s going to be an amazing night that I personally can’t wait for ❤️
www.outsavvy.com/event/27015/...

Beyond hyped for this one, the first in our summer event series! Join us for an incredible pride poetry night with @carolinebirduk.bsky.social, Richard Scott, Sophie Robinson and Roberto Salvador Cenciarelli ❤️

www.outsavvy.com/event/27015/...

So, I’ve written a new play about Mary Whitehouse, The Gay News Blasphemy Trial and homophobia in the 70s and 80s. Also, Maxine Peake is in it… 🤯

Relating to this quote at the moment…

‘I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself.’ - Fran Lebowitz

‘They eat their oats in their sleep’

I love this prose poem by Rita Dove

‘Your father’s father’s father
poisoned a beautiful horse’

- Dane Holt

Tonight at 7, i will have the pleasure of hosting Dane Holt’s online launch. Join us us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

“Amends” It’s 11.9 miles to Mardela Springs. The public school’s a left away from the town which is too small to be called a town. Past the school and heading south is a road which immediately kisses country, a large pond there with a house beside it. The shadows in the fall morning make a wind beside the house. The students are tired. It’s Monday. It doesn’t seem to matter what day, most of the time they’re tired. In the early fall dark the road whispers to the pond. “Amends.” School is out, no one hears. In 216 the janitor replaces a fluorescent light. He drops a screw from ten steps up. The school is so quiet it hears the drop. The school and the road begin their talk. Soon the pond joins in. “Amends.”

one of the all-time beautiful Monday poems imo, “Amends” by Michael Burkard

Katharine Towers The Lark Ascending SPRING 2025, 110 The lark ascended when my father died We sat quictly in our pews as the notes took hold of the soul, at frst tugging firmly (the soul not wanting to leave), then lifting up with X sound like a soft click. Then the lark could see cverything: the lowlands where we were crying and above the pointed bluc sky. The lark's notes were like threads or like stitches. They gathered together, then drifted apart and trickled down to start again the upward toil, carrying the soul in its extremc heaviness. The lark could sce that we werc only very small that the lowlands were flat and dull. The lark could scarcely bear the wcight of the soul but still he sang as he falteringly lifted and lapsed., falteringly lapsed and lifted Then we could not see the lark at all although we could hcar the high clcan notes which dropped down upon us like rain falling from a cloud that is not there.

This beautiful poem by Katharine Towers in the latest @poetrylondon.bsky.social is just stunning.

Oop sorry, at 6pm not 6.30

OK, and these two by @shevchenkoknight.bsky.social Basket magazine is my new favourite
basketmagazine.co.uk/issues/issue...

‘It’s grim, the way I’m never dead and neither are you, in this zombie apocalypse called poetry.’

@poetclare.bsky.social knocking it out of the park

@carcanet.bsky.social

ALSO I have the pleasure of hosting Dane Holt’s online launch for his frankly brilliant collection ‘Father’s Father’s Father’s Father.’ 26th March. At 6.30pm. You can book your free ticket here…go on, do it now :)👇 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dane-holt-...

I really admire this poem by Dane Holt. He takes that particular ‘flatness’ of grief and finds a playfulness within it… which is so hard! How on earth do you play with flatness? Like this:

Text reads: The Murder House, Caroline Bird Even the estate agent tried to dissuade you. The soundproof vault, the staircases leading to nowhere, the firebrick kiln in the basement with the scent of a surgeon’s suite not to mention your raccoon-eyed landlord jangling all night around the strip-lit corridors with an ogre’s fist of keys hanging from his belt, whistling whilst stacking Sellotaped towers of meaty Tupperware into multiple chest freezers but you said the rent was reasonable and moved straight in. When I visited, your hair already smelt of formaldehyde and something else

Text reads: unplaceable but you said you ‘quite liked it’ plus, the police had ‘found nothing.’ And when I asked why a house needed twenty-seven chimneys, you just blinked and accused me of ‘being dramatic.’ After a while you stopped entertaining guests. When I knocked, you slid the chain, claiming to be towel-wrapped and fresh from the shower although twice I saw your shoe in the door and when I’d shout through the letterbox ‘Sweetheart. Please. You’re living in a murder house!’ you’d simply reply, ‘Then why aren’t I dead?’ and pad softly away on your transparent legs.

'The Murder House' from Ambush at Still Lake by @carolinebirduk.bsky.social was the Poem of the Day this weekend on @poetrydaily.bsky.social!

Mid-air There is a corner of the city where the air is soft resin. Step in and it hardens around you. Suspended in amber. We made the mistake of kissing there. I mean, here. Our mouths midway across the same inhalation like robbers mid-leap between rooftops. If kisses were scored by composers they'd place the breath on the upbeat. Oh God. Music preceded by mid-air, when the baton lifts, the orchestra tightens: 'And' before the 'one two three.' And the sunlight is meticulous. And the river holds its tongue. And your silver earring steels like an aerialist's hoop, caught mid-spin. A note almost sung. Locked in the amber of the and. We just want to land or be landed on.

The most gorgeous of love poems, the absolute number one in my #Valentine’s countdown, mid-air from The Air Year by @carolinebirduk.bsky.social

#poem #poetry #lgbtq

Ah this makes me very happy, thank you