Resurrectionists

Born in London in 1984, John Challis is the author of the pamphlet, The Black Cab (Poetry Salzburg, 2017), a 2019 New Writing North Read Regional title, and is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Northern Writers’ Award. In 2015 he was a poet-in-residence with the Northern Poetry Library and chosen as one of the Poetry Trust’s Aldeburgh Eight. His poems have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4, and published in journals including Magma, The North, Poetry London, The Rialto, Stand, and elsewhere. John also writes reviews and essays, most recently for Wild Court, PN Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and The Poetry School. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, where he currently works as a Research Associate. His first book-length collection, The Resurrectionists, is published by Bloodaxe in 2021. He lives in Whitley Bay.

In John Challis’s superb first collection, the past has not finished with us. It pursues and provokes and questions what we’re about. Entire vanished or vanishing worlds of work – on the East End docks, at Smithfield, in the pre-Murdoch print, at the wheel of a black cab – reveal vivid traffic between the living and the dead. In rich, urgent combinations of the dramatic and the lyric, Challis adds new energy to the poetry of history, in the tradition of Harrison, Smith, Dunn and Wainwright. In its embrace of both the political and the metaphysical, and in its tender regard for ordinary life the book is both timely and necessary.’

• 11 The Love12 in my heart13 To a Coal-fired Power Station15 Plague Ground17 Advertising18 Preservation in Situ19 This is the market20 The Knowledge22 Horses in Upton Park24 Hansard25 The Last Good Market27 The District Line28 Inside Time29 Deadman’s Walk32 Thames33 The Origin of Coal35 There may be thawing damage36 Gift of the Gab37 In Praise of the Flood38 Things can only get better39 Entrenched40 B Road Lay-by42 Where the devil gets in43 All graves flung open44 Ballad Night at Sgt Peppers45 Sold at the roadside in hell46 Resurrectionists48 Into the Maze50 The moth collector52 Naming the Light53 How to disable the alarm on a Saab 900054 North Cascades56 Single Litre Engine57 Driving home from hospital after the hottest day of the year59 There’s been talk60 Sleeping on the top floor of a Travelodge while below another night begins61 Shade62 Night Change63 Hail!65 The clear and present day66 Prayer at the Edge of the West69 Acknowledgements