Reckless Paper Birds

Winner of the 2020 Hawthornden prize

Shortlisted for the 2019 Costa Poetry Award
Surreal, joyful, political and queer, Reckless Paper Birds is a collection to treasure by Polari Prize-winning poet John McCullough.
These exuberant poems welcome you into a psychedelic, parallel world of 'vomit and blossom' where Kate Bush mingles with a weeping Lady Gaga, a 'fractal coast' full of see-through things: water, mirrors, glass pebbles.
With a magpie's eye for hidden charms, McCullough ranges across birdlife, Grindr and My Little Pony while also addressing social issues from homelessness to homophobia.

John McCullough's first collection of poems, The Frost Fairs, won the Polari First Book Prize and was a Book of the Year for The Independent. His second, Spacecraft (Penned in the Margins, 2016), was named one of The Guardian's Best Books for Summer and shortlisted for the Ledbury Forte Poetry Prize. His latest collection, Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins, 2019) was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award.