John Challis
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Two poems by John Challis
The below poems are taken from John Challis’s debut collection, The Resurrectionists, forthcoming from Bloodaxe this month. There’s been talk of a child born on Cheapside with a wolf’s tail and goat’s breasts, of Quakers down Cannon Street with pans of fire on their heads, and months ago, in…
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Permanent Afternoons: The Underworld in the Poetry of Sean O’Brien
John Challis Then, midway down that channel of the dead, A figure thick with mud rose up and called: ‘Who are you? You have come before your time.’ (Inferno, trans. Sean O’Brien) Since reading the Inferno as a teenager, the subject of the dead in poetry has continued to fascinate me. There…