Everything Begins with the Skin

In her first full-length collection, this London poet informs her poems with a painter's vision, sketching intense portraits of domesticity. When her daughter begins menstruating, she refuses to echo her own mother's whispered ``The Curse,'' and urges the girl to ""Feel your roots, deep/ and damp as rusty beets smelling of earth."" Going beyond the visual, these unflinching poems take into account all the senses as they mark one woman's journey from childhood through motherhood, from love through, as one poem is titled, ""Betrayal."" Focusing mainly on women, Hubbard juxtaposes friends and relatives with legendary and artistic figures in a well-crafted collection that, taking an approach less common in British poetry than American, mines the unique riches of everyday experience. (Oct.)