Nyhet

Green Parcel

Häftad, Engelska, 2026

168 kr

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Beskrivning

The rural terrain of John Challis’s second collection provides a new lens for exploring history, class and work, our relationship to the natural world, and cycles of growth and decay. Much of his debut collection The Resurrectionists concerned working lives in the city: his father a London cabbie, his grandfather a market porter. Here his focus shifts to a crumbling stately home in Northumberland brought to life through the voices of the grounds as well as those who inhabit it and maintain it. London is at a distance. We find ourselves beyond, in backyards, on motorways, in fields, searching for the green patch in Kent, where an East End family picked hops in the summer. Despatches from the early years of fatherhood reflect on ageing, loss and patience. Poems set in the American west consider the idea of freedom. And on the eve of his execution, thief and folk hero Jack Sheppard flees into the forest of his mind. Confronting the tension between wanting to belong and the desire to escape, these poems acknowledge and reckon with the people and places that haunt us.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-06-25
Mått:138 x 216 x 8 mm
Vikt:136 g
Format:Häftad
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:80
Förlag:Bloodaxe Books Ltd
ISBN:9781780377698

Utforska kategorier

Poesi inom Skönlitteratur

Mer om författaren

Born in London in 1984, John Challis has held several residencies. 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 other residences have include ones at Keats Shelley House in Rome, and at Seaton Delaval Hall, a National Trust property in Northumberland, which produced Hallsong, a collaboration with filmmaker Christo Wallers. His pamphlet, The Black Cab (Poetry Salzburg, 2017), was a 2019 New Writing North Read Regional title. His first book-length collection, The Resurrectionists, was published by Bloodaxe in 2021, and will be followed by his second, The Green Parcel, in 2026. 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 has received a Pushcart Prize and a Northern Writers’ Award for his work. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, where worked as a Research Associate, and he now teaches at York St John University. He lives in York.

Recensioner i media

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.

Innehållsförteckning

110 Night God11 The Green Parcel 12 Ha-Ha13 Veil14 What we know15 Cathedral 16 Pylons 17 The Fields 18 A Way of Knowing19 Kindling20 Found Pastoral21 Minor Gods22 The Book of Catches23 The best is still below24 Re: The Statue 25 Compost Heap26 Angler27 Data Centres 28 Underhouse29 Download30 Rain 233 Rapture 34 Night Work35 The Charitable Physician 36 Secret Nuclear Bunker 37 Jack Sheppard Waits for Dawn38 The Triple Tree39 Resistant Materials40 Woodchipper41 Parts & Labour 42 Junctions43 The Administrators Arrive at the Offices of the Gods 44 Closing Night45 Parties46 Courts, Gardens, Houses, Halls47 Borders 48 Hallsong49 Onwards50 North51 Road52 Elegy355 London’s Edge56 Fired City57 Old Century58 Sugar 59 Pin Money 60 Youth61 The Mausoleum62 Trip Report 63 North Shields Nocturne 64 Winter Opening Hours65 Ordinary Loss66 Featherweight67 The Orbital 68 American Routine69 A Field Out West After the Fourth of July 70 Found Suburban71 A Thrift Store in America72 Shelter73 No-see-ums74 Diablo75 On the South Rim of the Grand Canyon 76 Wreath79 Notes