Farewell to the Earth

Dust to dust, that much we know. But it's what happens in between that counts. In Christopher James' mercurial second collection, Seamus Heaney breaks down in a lane; John Lennon haunts the Great Wall of China while an archaeologist is exhumed sometime in the distant future. This is where the living and the dead intermingle like passengers waiting nervously for a flight. Reaching from the Humber to the Thames; Cromer to Kathmandu, it's a dizzying and unpredictable world tour that veers in and out of reality like a plane passing through a cloud. In the shadow of environmental disaster and the possibility of dragons, there are more mundane dramas to face too: house moves, family secrets, marriage proposals that do not go to plan, and children woken in the night by rain. 'Farewell to the Earth' begins and ends with ashes, but in between a Technicolor epic unfolds, throwing its glinting light on everyday life.