"Spirit Brides" by Togara Muzanenhamo (Carcanet, 2006)

In "Captain of the Lighthouse" the narrator and his brother are on an anthill, playing make-believe. "We man our lighthouse - cattle as ships. We throw warning lights whenever/ they come too close to our jagged shore. The anthill, the orris-earth/ lighthouse, from where we hurl stones like light in all directions.". At the end the narrator writes that he misses his brother now. It's a rather wordy poem. I like the plot. I liked "Half Untold" except for the format. "Man in the Bowler Hat" was ok. "The Conductor" contrasts a conductor with baton to a head-master with cane. Poems on pages 18-20 seem rather slight.

"Six Francs Seventy-five" is a sestina. "The Dawn Chorus" is a sonnet. The book ends with "Gamiguru", a 10 page piece mostly laid out as prose. He inserts passages of purple prose (with mixed results - I don't think irony's being used), and passages of adjective-rich prose. Here are some phrases that caught my eye

• Turning in the distance are the white tri-sails of a wind farm Strange and quiet - those tall metal ghosts writhing in unison, Their bladed arms glinting like broad scalpels slicing the slow shine Where the last folds of daylight ache before the gathering storm

  How do the turbines writhe?
• the night staggers through the empty streets, the cold wind whistling out of tune (p.28)
• Drivers eating meat-pies, listening to radio shows hosting phone-ins at three in the morning, or playing games to pass the time - counting the centre white lines or cat's eyes, trying to figure out how many pass within ten seconds or so, how many pass in a mile (p.30)
• the German car rolling into the garage as safe as warm honey twirling into a jam jar (p.32)
• These thoughts in the late hour, face after face falling into the dark; each dead portrait lost to hopeless memories framed beneath quiet glass. And tonight they come with stones, whole mobs with sticks and fire - chanting, readying to break every window of the years (p.33)
• The old projector's fan hums through each guillotine changeover, and specks of dust float casually in front of the hot white light of the lens (p.37)
• The nights unfold on flash-lit crests of waves beneath a full moon,/ The wind rushes at frosted windows like the wraith of a blood bull (p.53)
• At meetings they called him Cenotaph because his eyes held the fire of their long lost dead and the spirit of those still fighting (p.59 - the ending)