Court is where you go when you get caught. It’s a temple of justice, a tragic theatre, a circus, a long-running soap opera and a revolving door. Victoria Bean spent a year in Horseferry Road Magistrate’s Court in central London, recording in verse the high-drama and low-comedy of the English justice system.

Caught is a wholly unique take on everyday life in a busy courtroom and its cast of thieves, drunks, kerb-crawlers and dealers who come before the bench each day in despair, bewilderment and indifference. All human life is here – the strong and the weak, the hopeless and hapless, the users and losers, the innocent and the guilty, the banged-up and the free.

Victoria Bean is an artist and a member of the Arc Editions group. Her work has been collected by the Tate, the V&A, and shown at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her previous publications include the limited editions Ten Poems for Pandora, helvetica poems and Heartburn, and her poems have appeared in The Spectator and Poetry Review Salzburg. She currently works in a voluntary capacity with Young Offenders. Caught is her first full-length collection. She lives in London.