Boom!

The title poem of this new collection of poems by Carolyn Jess-Cooke: ''Boom!'' enacts the moment when the new baby arrives in the family ''like a hand grenade''. ''Becoming a mother changed me in every single way,'' says the author, ''my first child - born in October 2006 - just about knocked me sideways. There were many reasons for this, but here''s the biggest one: I could not believe how public and political the (hugely personal) experience of motherhood was.'' A noted academic, author of a book about film and Shakespeare, and a best-selling popular novelist ''The Guardian Angel''s Journal'' and ''The Boy Who Could See Demons'', Jess-Cooke found, as many parents do, that the juggling act required to raise young children and continue a professional and creative life, is both exhausting and fulfilling. The poems chronicle the rapturous moments, such as ''Wakening'' where the baby is observed: ''the seedling eyes stirred by sunlight''. There are also the tragi-comic ''Nights'' full of ''small elbows in the face'' and ''assailed by colds and colic''. Jess-Cooke doesn''t flinch from the darker fears and depressions that can afflict parents. There are also pieces of pointed satirical intent and socio-political comment such as ''Poem made from bits of Newspaper Headlines '' and ''The Only Dad in Playgroup''. Viewing motherhood from a multiplicity of artful angles, the author says, ''Coupled with all this was the love I had for my children. It completely and utterly blew me away, how much I could love another human being.''