John Challis Readings
'John Challis writes with beauty and passion of the so-called every day… he gives us all majesty and a kind of shimmering quality…’ – Ian McMillan
The rural terrain of John Challis’s second full-length collection The Green Parcel (Bloodaxe Books, June 2026) 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.
John Challis was born in London in 1984. 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. He 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 residencies have included ones at Keats Shelley House in Rome, and at Seaton Delaval Hall, a National Trust property in Northumberland, which produced Hallsong, a pamphlet of poems, and a film collaboration with filmmaker Christo Wallers. Poems from his Seaton Delaval Hall residency are also included in his second full-length collection The Green Parcel (Bloodaxe Books, June 2026). The Green Parcel was longlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2026.
He has received a Pushcart Prize and a Northern Writers’ Award for his work and was Highly Commended in the 2021 Forward Prizes for Poetry. John has also written reviews and essays and produced poetry for public art projects in Northumberland. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, where he worked as a Research Associate. He now teaches at York St John University and lives in York.
Scroll down to watch London Draft, a poem film by David Spittle featuring John Challis reading and speaking about poems from his second collection The Green Parcel.
~~~~~
The Green Parcel was very well reviewed by Jade Cuttle in her Poetry Books of the Month column in The Observer. In print on Sunday 31 May 2026. Available online here, where the review is accompanied by a poem from the collection.
'...for Challis, when thoughts crystallise they do so with force [...] These poems are sharp and satisfying – and can be consumed in stolen moments of parental calm. While Challis’s 2021 debut collection, The Resurrectionists, dwelled in the working lives of the city – a London cabbie father, a market porter grandfather; cockle pickers, butchers and barrow boys – this second book has a greener and grander canvas.' – Jade Cuttle, The Observer (Poetry Books of the Month) on The Green Parcel
An excellent in-depth review of The Green Parcel went online in Wild Court on 17 June 2026. Read here.
‘Here is articulation and exhibition of things described that manages to enter almost the mythic in world-building. […] The Green Parcel does not lend itself to easy summation, and nor should it. Poetry of this consistently high quality is for the reader far more than the critic. I stand by my recommendation to judge it by its cover because its cover tells us that it is a poetry collection by John Challis, and that means we need to read it.’ – Patrick Davidson Roberts, Wild Court
~~~~~
John Challis gave in-person launch readings in Newcastle, York and London. Scroll down to watch a video of his joint Bloodaxe online launch of 23 June 2026.
~~~~~
FORTHCOMING READINGS
Thursday 1 October 2026
Reading with Katherine Towers
The Poetry Pharmacy, York
More details TBC.
~~~~~
London Draft: Poem Film by David Spittle
In February 2026, John Challis and filmmaker David Spittle visited the industrial Thames estuary and the Cranham Marsh Nature Reserve near where Challis grew up, to explore connections between memory, place and poetry. London Draft is a record of searching for the places that leave their traces on the imagination and the self.
The film includes John Challis reading his poems ‘Youth’, ‘Night God, ‘London’s Edge’, ‘Pylons’, and ‘The Green Parcel’ from his second collection The Green Parcel (Bloodaxe, 2026).
A film by David Spittle, with music by Days Like Television.
~~~~~
PAST READINGS & RECORDINGS
Tuesday 23 June 2026 - Online launch event with John Challis, Frank Ormsby and Lawrence Sail
Joint online launch event for new June 2026 titles by John Challis, Frank Ormsby and Lawrence Sail. All three poets celebrated the publication of their new books, with John Challis and Lawrence Sail reading live from their books. Frank Ormsby draws on his experience of living with Parkinson's Disease in his recent work and is unable to take part, but has been able to make audio recordings to be played during this event with screen-shared poems from his book.
The post-reading discussion with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley, featured John Challis and Lawrence Sail along with Frank Ormsby's friend, the writer and broadcaster Malachi O'Doherty, who made the audio recordings.
This free Bloodaxe launch event was streamed on YouTube Live and is now available below and on this YouTube page: https://youtube.com/live/6OitDbheZ8A
The Verb: After Dark Festival: The Chance to Change, BBC Radio 3, Friday 25 March 2022, 10pm
John Challis was a guest on a special edition of The Verb recorded in front of an audience at the After Dark Festival at Sage Gateshead. John read from his debut collection The Resurrectionists. The book is mostly set in London, but John has been based in North-East England for over ten years.
The recording took place on Saturday 18 March 2022 at Sage Gateshead’s Northern Rock Foundation Hall.
Listen here.
NEWCASTLE POETRY FESTIVAL 2022
John Challis reads poems from The Resurrectionists: 'The Knowledge'; 'Plague Ground'; 'This is the market'; 'Thames'; 'Driving home from hospital after the hottest day of the year'; 'Night Change'; 'Hansard'; 'Naming the Light' and 'Prayer at the Edge of the West'. Filmed by Peter Hebden. Special thanks to Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts.
LAUNCH EVENTS WITH BLOODAXE AND AT NCLA
Tuesday 22 June 2021, 7pm BST, Joint online launch event
This joint online launch reading by Penelope Shuttle, A.B. Jackson and John Challis celebrating the publication of their new poetry collections was live streamed on 22 June 2021. The audience was taken on a journey under the sea to the submerged land of Lyonesse with Penelope Shuttle, over the ocean with A B Jackson's The Voyage of St Brendan, and both underground and overground in London with John Challis in his debut The Resurrectionists.
The event was hosted by editor Neil Astley from his home in Northumberland. Penelope joined from her home in Falmouth, John from Whitley Bay, and Scottish poet A B Jackson from his home in Leeds. Their collections are all published on 24 June 2021 by Bloodaxe Books - all three are 'making something new out of things that have been lost', as Penelope put it.
John Challis read first in each set, followed by Penelope, then A B Jackson. The readings were followed by discussion and Q&A with the online audience. All three books explore the past in one form or another - 'archaeology by verse', according to one audience member.
Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts, Thursday 7 October 2021, 7-8pm (via Zoom)
A Poetry Reading with John Challis and Sean O'Brien and 'in conversation' with Bill Herbert
NCLA’s Research Associate John Challis’ debut collection was published by Bloodaxe this year. He was reading with Sean O’Brien, who was John’s PhD supervisor. Event hosted by Newcastle University’s Bill Herbert.
Sean read first, and then John Challis read from 25:17. They both joined Bill for a discussion afterwards, with questions from the online audience.
John Challis's first full-length collection The Resurrectionists (Bloodaxe Books, 2021) was launched with a joint online event hosted by Bloodaxe Books on 22 June 2021 (see video above).
An interview with John Challis is on Shuddhashar Magazine here, along with some poems from The Resurrectionists.
'Thames' from The Resurrectionists was discussed by Carol Rumens in her Poem of the Week column in The Guardian of 20 September 2021. Read here.
Two poems from the collection were featured on Wild Court here.
The Resurrectionists was reviewed in The Guardian of 5 June 2021. Ben Wilkinson's review is online here.
[27 May 2026]
