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 heres 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 Angels 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 doesnt 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.