A Pocketful of Chalk

The South Downs lie at the heart of this collection - the sunsets and huge skies, cliffs and fossils, fishing vessels and windmills, people and sheep. Past, present and future collide within geological and emotional landscapes. Life erupts magically out of plum trees.

Love is as friable as chalk, and as deeply underpinned. A lost father is redeemed through the gift of a chocolate rabbit, a loved one returns in the shape of a trombone. Mothers, both human and animal, prove their strength.

Not just another 'nature poem' collection, Claire's poems are vigorous, challenging, uncompromising. She ties urban landscape and life in Brighton into a discourse on the way the ground under our feet impacts on how we live our lives - chalk downland is an unquestionably specific ecology, which is of course why South Downs is a National Park. A Pocketful of Chalk bursts with myth and metaphor, energy and originality.

The giant of Wilmington leaves his hillside in an apocalyptic vision of global warming. Herons and Ospreys take flight, and a boy releases monsters from the sea shore. A cow really does jump over the moon.

Claire Booker offers moving and memorable poetry from an iconic corner of England.