Cometary Phases builds on the lyrical and unsentimental portrayal of rural life which is a feature of Christine Evans' work, but includes a striking new imaginative power.

Ageing, change, the environment and the position of women are her subjects now, in poems often shot through with darkness and foreboding.

At the centre of Cometary Phases are a group of remarkable poems from the small hours, the time 'between wakings': the poems of a gifted insomniac, as they have been called. Other poems imaginatively enter the world of animals, like the unforgettable ’Whale Dream’, while the long title poem searches for meaning in change and death, a search lit by Halley’s Comet.