Awakening is the theme of this fiery debut about the "ghost world" of shadows and personae. A sense of history, politics, and place is an integrated and integral part of the whole, alive with stirring accounts of travel, intimate moments of solitude, and encounters with the ineffable. Romantic in spirit and contemporary in outlook, James Arthur writes exciting, rhythmical, elastic poems. "Charms against Lightning" Against meningitis and poisoned milk, flash floods and heartwreck, against daydreams, Against losing your fingers, drinking detergent, earthquakes, baldness, divorce, against falling in love with a child, Against lupus and lawsuits, lying stranded between nations, against secrets and frostbite, the burring of trains that never arrive, Against songlessness, your mother's depression, the death of the cedars, Siberian crane, Against these talismans against lightning; the shutters swing, and clack their yellow teeth; the deep sky welters and the windows quiver.
