The poems in this collection are clever and funny, but I’m often suspicious of clever and funny: Funny how? I’ve been programmed to ask, and the word ‘clever’ is all too often just criticism in disguise. A lot of poems are funny and clever but there has to be more, and happily there is. This … Continue reading The Hat-Stand Union, Caroline Bird, (Carcanet, 2013, £9.95), reviewed by Janet Rogerson