A POCKETFUL OF CHALK
(ARACHNE PRESS)
This little volume thrills with what poetry is really about – love, death, creativity all dressed in the lightest of fabrics which are discarded as the humanity beneath comes slowly to the surface. There is the question, basic to a poet, of creativity itself. A horse, for example, is ‘the pivot of creation’: THE HIGH WINDOW (David Pollard)
There’s more than a little strong emotion and fine perception among the poems which form Claire Booker’s third collection, A Pocketful of Chalk. ARTEMIS (Dilys Wood)
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What’s striking about this collection is the consistency of the voice, the sense of achieved self in the words and the landscapes, together with the quiet but definite sense of humour. Tom Vaughan
This is nature poetry at its best, interwoven with the subtle and moving evocation of intense moments in a life course: youthful and mature loves, a parent’s decline, mothering and not mothering . . . Lyn Thomas
I emerged from Claire Booker’s A Pocketful of Chalk refreshed, as if from a journey across the downs and cliff-tops that she so clearly loves. This is a collection of remarkable honesty, breadth and depth, full of Booker’s insights into her own experience and her perceptions at precise moments, seasons and times. WRITE OUT LOUD (Janice Windle)
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