NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

In recent years there can be few young poets who have burst, fully formed, upon the poetry scene as Christopher James does with his first collection, THE INVENTION OF BUTTERFLY. The word invention, in the title of his book, stands like a beacon to his success — James has got imagination in spades and this, together with his off-beat humour and assured skill as a story teller, allows him to compose cleverly formed and unique poems. James is interested in the curious, he is drawn to unusual facts as in EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPAEDIA:

	Bald eagles can actually swim.
	They use an overhead movement of their wings 
	that is very much like the butterfly stroke.

Reading THE INVENTION OF BUTTERFLY at one sitting is a bit like watching a compilation of the best bits of Monty Python's Flying Circus. If anything, it is even more bizarre as the book leaps from a vision of [Samuel] PEPYS AT SEA via CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE IN REVERSE to an unusual take on Pinocchio — THE LAST PRANK OF THE MARIONETTE.

I particularly liked THE ONLY PENNY FARTHING IN ICELAND in which a careless Victorian cyclist and his machine tumble from a Liverpool dockside into the freezing hold of a trawler where they are:

	embedded in a hoard of herring and crushed ice

 
	Reunited with his bicycle on the dockside
	the man resembled a newly commissioned statue,
	still slightly bent at the knee and stiff as cardboard,
	an official gift perhaps, from a neighbouring state

 
	We watch him set up his  music
	in the subway, lightly spinning
	that beautiful piece of blonde wood
	on its silver stem until he nodded, 
	swallowed the last of his milky coffee, 
	drew back his bow and pronounced a note
	like the first word of the morning.

	the flowers keep coming

	the banjo was buried  in the corner

	Everyday we tended two nurseries
	one up, one down, until after a week
	we gave up, and as the flowers waned
	our baby blossomed, each first-thing smile
	as new as the first buds of spring.

	it was started they said, on the Regent's Canal
	On a barge laden with bottled Guinness,
	By a child tied to the roof to stop her falling in

Despite these small reservations, I would recommend THE INVENTION OF BUTTERFLY as a compelling and fascinating book — this accomplished and inventive young poet will certainly be someone to watch.