THE BONE THAT SANG
(INDIGO DREAMS PUBLISHING)

Booker is like a modern-day Scheherazade, weaving tales that pull you in and transfix. . .
 
This poetry is beautifully crafted and spans so much. Sharp, spiked through with humour, and so cleverly written that it often takes you somewhere you don’t expect to go. That is what’s so fabulous about Booker’s poems – you can’t quite nail them . . .
 
You will return to these poems again and again, and each time they will reveal something new and unexpected. ​
LONDON GRIP (Louise Warren)
Throughout this collection, memorable turns of phrase surprise and delight. In ‘View from the Gibralfaro, Malaga’ “burnt ochre crenellations / steam like washed horses”. In ‘Student Clinic’ Mrs Nkumbo’s hat is a “blazing sun / that never sets” and in ‘Baby Blue’ the name Scarlet O’Hara is ingeniously turned into a verb.
 
Variety is key in this collection of 27 poems where Booker breaks out of the domesticity of ‘little England’ to embrace subjects on an international scale  .
Out of these materials, Booker constructs challenging poems that are fired with surprising imagery and verbal dexterity. There is light and dark in equal measure here.
THE POET MAGAZINE (Neil Leadbeater)
This is a seriously good pamphlet. It has pride of place on my desk.
David Pollard
Claire Booker writes lyrical poems with compassion, allowing readers to construct the stories they tell. ‘The Bone That Sang’ is tender, wryly humoured and human in the treatment of its subjects . . .
 
In ‘Abdul Haroun Almost Medals at Dover’ she reimagines him as an Olympian who “dodges surveillance cameras as if they’re bullets – that’s been a useful training – then it’s a steady race along the track with the breath of family behind him.” A breathless race through a refugee’s journey, the short vowels and double consonants create a sense of urgency. Readers discover there’s “no podium for Haroun . . . The poem’s light touch belies its subject matter: the sacrifices made to make it to England . . .
 
Two personal poems involve Amma-ji (a note explains this means dearest mother/mother-in-law). In ‘Life Support’, Amma-ji and the narrator watch nature programmes together,
 
“The emperor penguin on his egg: if it broke we’d watch him warm a smooth, round rock instead.
Now they tell us you’ve been dead all week –
 
that your lips twitch from intubation,
your fingers grip mine out of primitive habit.
 
I tell them: go, let me incubate my rock.
EMMA LEE’S BLOG
Loves a metaphor does Claire Booker, and man-o-man does she know how to wield them. At their best they possess a magnetic force, drawing one into the conceit. Where one follows the meandering of her imagination as she is given to speculating on – a preoccupation with pavements? – or it’s play, stone, a rough sleeper, refuge, tourists, fruit, buildings . . . but best of all Mrs Nkumbo. At times, so wholly does she inhabit her subject that I had to hurry to catch up, only to stop in wonder at where we had arrive. All quite lovely.
THE JOURNAL (Sam Smith)
Claire Booker’s lines never fail to engage and the off-kilter, sometimes tragic encounters recorded in her latest collection The Bone That Sang will take from her readers the same intensity that went into their writing. The words are often like fireworks. Sparklers, rockets and Catherine wheels fizz on the page.
 
The final poems are meditative and lyrical. Remembering her parents in Nightfall at Skiathos Harbour she wishes to trade herself: “for one of the silver bream foraging harbour ink, to feel your footsteps by the water’s edge, and leap for pieces of your broken bread.” Amma-ji Goes on Haj is a tender, solemn farewell to a deeply loved mother-in-law.
 
Luminous. I can recommend The Bone That Sang to anyone looking for original, inspiring poetry.
SOUTH (Rosemary Muncie)
A piece of vertebra found by a herdsman in a forest, in the startling opening (and title poem) of The Bone That Sang, by Claire Booker, becomes, with human ingenuity and craftsmanship, an instrument to be played with human lips, yet lips are a part of a mouth that can proclaim false truths: “that walk and talk/ like real children.”
 
One thing can easily become something else with human imagination: “look up long enough/ and the cave flips into a Manhattan skyline” (Rock Beast), “a handkerchief” from a dead mother “drops” into the narrator’s hand “like a dove” (Deadline).
 
This poet is skilled in the use of haunting metaphors that can expose the human condition, and the term ‘bone’, used more than once, contains as many complex layers as the material itself.
ARTEMIS (Susan Jane Sims)
Acute social observation brim over in Claire Booker’s ‘The Bone That Sang’. Here is a poet concerned with social injustice and individual hurt . . .
 
Her subject matter is extensive and intense. The plight of the would-be asylum seeker, the violence of a child in poverty, a homeless man swept up into a bin wagon . . . These poems announce a lyrically indignant voice. In spite of her unflinching eye, in the face of cruelty, Booker very much cares.
 
‘The Bone That Sang’ is tightly packed with intelligent, startling and rigorous imagery to make you read on.
​A terrific pamphlet.
THE HIGH WINDOW (Alan Price)
Bold, inventive, metaphorically rich . . . Here is poetry that challenges head and heart, and leaves an astonishing array of ideas and imagery playing in the mind . . . assured choices in form, tone and language never fail to move or pack a punch.
 
Fine evocation of place and mood in the beautiful ‘Nightfall at Skiathos Harbour’ and View from the Gibralfaro, Malaga’ usher in moving expressions of love for the dead.
 
Gentle lilting rhythms build to crescendo in ‘Amma-ji Goes on Haj’, a dying mother-in-law’s final spiritual journey:
 
‘We only know that she is far
on her night journey, tiptoeing up each star
in her white sari, ever closer to the Scorpion’s sting.
 
She, who knew only four walls, will dive in the ten directions.
She, who knew the name of fifth cousins,
will know only one name –
 
the Kab’ah finally within fingers reach.’ ​
DREAMCATCHER (Jane Maker)
I absolutely love these poems. Powerful thoughts and ideas presented in very striking and imaginative ways. Beautiful.
Dawn Gorman (The Poetry Place)
Claire Booker’s second pamphlet has an indefatigable spirit . . . The poems reveal a tender humanity and have an unflagging energy.
 
The political nature of many of these poems refuses to let the reader off the hook, but Booker’s fine sense of tone and craft means we are happy to be left wriggling . . . Her control of the line and image ensure ‘that bones sing when they find a ready ear.’
Lisa Kelly
It was lovely to dive into your pamphlet – so many wonderful stories and characters to enjoy!
Isabel Kenyon
You have a remarkable way with words. So captivating. If I had to choose just one favourite poem, it would have to be ‘At Risk Child’. That poem speaks to me of 21st century attitudes to ‘want’ and responsbility’ or lack thereof.
Rachael Joseph
What shines forth from the poems gathered together in The Bone That Sang is the diversity of their settings and the inclusivity of their author’s narrative world-view.
 
In a darkly sardonic sonnet (‘Abdul Haroun Almost Medals at Dover’), Booker recounts the true story of a refugee who made it “from the bloody sands of Sudan to the concrete beds/ of Sangatte’ only to fall the last. “He dodges surveillance cameras as if they’re bullets”, but “at 28 miles hits the wall.” Booker goes on to express her anger and compassion with comic irony:
 
“No podium for Haroun, though he heard the Brits
love an underdog, went wild when two plucky pigs
hot-footed it off a knacker’s truck to freedom.”
 
Two poems evoke the last journey and character (presumably) of Booker’s Bengali mother-in-law. ‘Amma-ji Goes on Haj’ contains tender details:
 
“. . . Soon she will forget how
she worked cotton into peacocks and palm trees.
slipped us secret generosities in envelopes.
 
Those feet that felt nothing for forty years,
will step onto the crescent moon
and dance to the great heartbeat of the Brahmaputra.”
 
The companion piece, ‘Life Support’, entwines Amma-ji’s fondness for TV nature documentaries with her death in hospital.
 
This is moving, memorable poetry, bursting with colour and life.
SPHINX (Matthew Paul)
Claire Booker