Christopher is often cited as co-founder with Craig Raine of the 'Martian School' of poetry which employs exotic and humorous metaphors to defamiliarize everyday experiences and objects. He received a Cholmondeley Award in 1995, the 2000 Signal Poetry Award for his children's collection All Sorts (1999). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2007, he edited The Selected Letters of Ted Hughes for Faber and Faber. His latest collections are The Song of Lunch (2009), and A Scattering (2009), in memory of his late wife, Lucinda. A Scattering was shortlisted for the 2009 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the 2009 T. S. Eliot Prize, and won the 2009 Costa Book of the Year.