Caroline Bird/Elaine Feinstein, 2 July 02

Caroline Bird and Elaine Feinstein
Voice Box, South Bank Centre
London, 2 July 2002

A different evening two years ago in Leicester: London are playing
Bradford in a Super League roadshow match with thirteen regulars
missing. Into their back division comes a young pup doing his A-levels.
He freezes on his debut, plays like a lost lamb missing its mother and
is never heard of again. Ah, the follies of promoting youth ahead of
its time we decree in the post-mortem afterwards.

Two years on, and Caroline Bird is giving her first reading in the
South Bank Centre's Voice Box and even before she reads her first poem
we all know she's in the middle of her GCSEs. She mentions herself, in
an early preamble, how ridiculous the exam hall can look if you allow
yourself to be removed from the action. She is 15 and she is published.
Elaine Feinstein, the other poet reading, has a granddaughter about
Caroline's age she tell us. We could be talking about another promotion
to the first team given too soon but Caroline Bird is good.

At the same time the event was starting another 'inclusive' South Bank
event was winding down. Hundreds of children along for some singing
contest run around the place in matching primary-coloured T-shirts.
Added to their noise, through the open windows, come the sounds of the
skateboarders who make the place their own as dusk falls. The early
thoughts are obvious: shouldn't you be out there Ms Bird?

To which the answer is a resounding "NO!". Her prize-winning poem
"Things Are a Little Boring Without You" is both funny and perceptive
about the twitchiness people develop when someone's not around ("I dug
a fifty foot trench / And ten seconds later filled it in again") but
the moment of genius is "Gingerbread House" whose mixture of adolescent
sexuality and bitter fairy-tale makes the whole audience breath a sigh
when finally it ends. Her poems reflect the concerns on which most
sixth-form poetry focuses but to call it that is insulting. It is
assured and it sticks with you. At the moment it does not seem to be
drawn from personal experience but then she still isn't quite old
enough to drink in pubs legally.

Elaine Feinstein had the unenviable task of being "not the prodigy"
when the sell-out crowd had come to see the young pretender. She read
from her 'Collected Poems and Translations' which focuses largely on
her experiences as an 'outsider'. She seems to revel in this and I have
to say I enjoyed her work a lot less than Caroline Bird's. So much so
that I can't remember a title or evocative phrase from any of them. But
I'm sure she has her admirers and her book seems bulky enough.

So all in all, an evening for dwelling on age and potential. I'm sure
when I did my GCSEs I was more worried about the questions ahead than
on being outside myself to look at the ridiculousness of it all.
Caroline Bird seems to be using her summer holidays to pursue a reading
tour. Elaine Feinstein might want to tell her granddaughter that she's
going to have to start soon if she ever wants to catch up.