JOURNALISM can be a good grounding for a poet. It teaches a writer to be succinct yet expressive. Retired journalist Rosemary Burnett, who lived at Launceston and later near Halwill Junction, has put the skills to good use. Her latest collection of poetry, Shells and Pebbles, displays a quiet strength that charges words with a meaning above and beyond the obvious. She is adept at lifting the everyday into the special and conjuring an atmosphere in the process. 'Quoditch Forest' — one of those almost eerie scenes when sun breaks into dense woodland — is Rosemary at her descriptive best, stepping carefully around the cliché. In some works, there are echoes of other poetry — no bad thing; every poet is influenced by others, whether consciously or not, and cannot exist in a valley of their own making. Thus, 'New Reservoir', with a lane that disappears below Roadford Lake, has the feel of some Northern Irish poetry, and 'To Billy' — The sun averted his gaze/And the children froze in play/that day in 1911/they took poor Billy away — puts the reader in mind of Charles Causley's works, so many of which nudged us not to forget those whom society shunned. But one poem, 'Names', edges closer to polemic. It has a political message with its dissection of the weasel words of warfare that cloak its horror. But this is more than made up for in the title poem, 'Shells and Pebbles' in which Rosemary is at her best. The opening lines have a chiming assonance: Cherish the days of bucket and spade With shells and pebbles giving pleasure. The poem tells of seaside mementoes removed from a beach, where they wink and twinkle, and brought home to be placed on a windowsill: Remote from true connection, their lustre dimmed forever. This is good writing, each word selected with care and the whole creating a mood of a happiness that is impossible to recapture. Rosemary Burnett is now in her mid-70s and lives at Minehead in Somerset. l Shells and Pebbles by Rosemary Burnett is published by John Garland, 38 Brendon Road, Watchet, West Somerset, price £4.75 to include p&p. COLIN BRENT