Claire Booker has worked for charities, local government and BBC Television as a journalist and press officer, and more recently as a medical herbalist and clinical hypnotherapist. She lives in Brighton.
Claire's first poetry collection, A Pocketful of Chalk, is out with Arachne Press. Her latest poetry pamphlets are The Bone That Sang (Indigo Dreams Publishing) and Later There Will Be Postcards (Green Bottle Press).
She won the Poetry Society’s Stanza Competition in 2023, and was long-listed in that year’s National Poetry Competition. She has been a winner in the Poems on the Move competition (2018) and a recipient of a Kathak International Literary Award. Claire travelled to Bangladesh as a guest poet at Dhaka’s International Poetry Summit 2019 and has featured at many poetry venues in the UK, including in London, Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester, Maidenhead, Oxford, Leicester, The Isle of Wight, Guildford and Winchester. She is a member of the Brighton Stanza Group.
Claire's first poetry collection, A Pocketful of Chalk, is out with Arachne Press. Her latest poetry pamphlets are The Bone That Sang (Indigo Dreams Publishing) and Later There Will Be Postcards (Green Bottle Press).
She won the Poetry Society’s Stanza Competition in 2023, and was long-listed in that year’s National Poetry Competition. She has been a winner in the Poems on the Move competition (2018) and a recipient of a Kathak International Literary Award. Claire travelled to Bangladesh as a guest poet at Dhaka’s International Poetry Summit 2019 and has featured at many poetry venues in the UK, including in London, Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester, Maidenhead, Oxford, Leicester, The Isle of Wight, Guildford and Winchester. She is a member of the Brighton Stanza Group.
Her poems have been set to music and performed at the Actor’s Church, Covent Garden; read simultaneously at six venues as part of Arachne Press’ Solstice Shorts Festival (2019); displayed on Worthing Pier and on a Guernsey bus; filmed by Aberystwyth University and published by Bucharest University as part of the UK/Romanian poetry collective, PoetryArtExchange.
Her poetry has appeared in 14, Agenda, Alchemy Spoon, Ambit, Artemis, Beshara, Butcher’s Dog, Caduceus, Channel Magazine, Delinquent, Dhaka Review, Dark Horse, Dreamcatcher, Ekphrastic Review, Elbow Room, Erbacce, Fenland Poetry Journal, Fib Review, Finished Creatures, Frogmore Papers, Ginosko, High Window, Interpreter’s House, Lake, Magma, Morning Star, Moth, New Welsh Reader, North, Orbis, Other Poetry, Pennine Platform, Poetry News, Poetry Birmingham, Poetry Salzburg, Popshot, Prole, Rialto, South Bank Poetry, Spectator, Spelt, Stand, Structo, Under the Radar, Wax Paper, Words for the Wild, among others.
Her poetry has appeared in 14, Agenda, Alchemy Spoon, Ambit, Artemis, Beshara, Butcher’s Dog, Caduceus, Channel Magazine, Delinquent, Dhaka Review, Dark Horse, Dreamcatcher, Ekphrastic Review, Elbow Room, Erbacce, Fenland Poetry Journal, Fib Review, Finished Creatures, Frogmore Papers, Ginosko, High Window, Interpreter’s House, Lake, Magma, Morning Star, Moth, New Welsh Reader, North, Orbis, Other Poetry, Pennine Platform, Poetry News, Poetry Birmingham, Poetry Salzburg, Popshot, Prole, Rialto, South Bank Poetry, Spectator, Spelt, Stand, Structo, Under the Radar, Wax Paper, Words for the Wild, among others.
She has also featured in numerous anthologies, including Ourselves in Rivers (Wee Sparrow Press), Skein (Templar Poetry); Poetry from Art (Tate Britain); The Sea (Emma Press); 3x Pocket Poetry Books (Paper Swans Press); Solstice Shorts / Menopause (Arachne Press); Pale Fire (Frogmore Press); Keystone (Dempsey and Windle); Voices for the Silent (Indigo Press); and Footprints (Broken Sleep Books).