WHY so coy, CW? Evidently a parent, since the collection is dedicated to "my children".

Almost certainly female, as one poem declares "I was born a Mother/ And mothers stay alive".

Like good plain cooking imaginatively tweaked here and there, the title poem mirrors the collection's general combination, unusual yet effective, of simple versifying with more sophisticated technique, embodying striking thought and images. Opening Oh, world what have we done to you?

Once so fresh, once so new it soon moves on to a powerful tsunami-inspired vision: But now you are defending With the might left in yourself.

You heave your oceans over us In protest and despair.

Subjects neatly skewered include Ladies Who Lunch ("A nest full of vipers, no less'') and Business Man ("my mobile phone declares my worth"). And while some poems, like Dream ("I've bought a cosy cottage/A cottage by the sea") proceed with no surprise, others bring you sharply up in your tracks: Sadists play with the mind Their cruelty makes me blind Blind to myself: Please, please help, I'm drowning in mankind.

And now - just fallen from my copy is a card that reveals CW to be "Caroline Walker BA(Hons), PGCE, NPQH. Performance Poetry and Story Telling. Writing Courses and Tuition Undertaken.'' True, this. Scribbled on the back is that she's from Barnard Castle, and is her first book.

Buyers will eagerly anticipate its successors.

Meanwhile, queues may form at CW's next poetry reading, especially if she is further unmasked as the shapely brunette semi-erotically pictured on World's cover - a completely false clue to the contents.