02 · Poetry
Poems &
collections
Poems have appeared in print since 2003 and include similar concerns with life, value, and objectification.
Texts · Documentary Poetics
The work
2006 — in progressIn progress
Silex
New work
A work in progress.
In progress
Pyroclasm
New work
A work in progress.
2027
Dialogues of the Body and the Soul
Guillemot Press
Forthcoming.
2016
The Tender Map
Guillemot Press
A limited-edition collection illustrated by archaeologist and artist Rose Ferraby, mapping places onto emotional states. Ferraby received the 2017 Michael Marks Illustration Award for the book.
2006
Galatea
Salt Publishing
A debut collection concerned with the body, loss, petrification and transformation. The work received a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award in 2005; the collection was shortlisted for the 2007 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection.
A poem
Everything visible is connected to the invisible.
Beyond all wounds with their memorial
Of kisses lie things unrealised as unrealisable,
The miraculous distance of incompleteness, as if all
sensations announce
Our experience at the boundary of terrible heavens.
The weight of attachment seems suspended
At the lychgate of the rend, where lamed
Inclinations associate with shadow.
Somewhere, clandestinely, the ghost of the limb
continues its actions
As if empty air were a transubstantiation of passion.
Or as we imagine terror erupts from a grey
And diffident sea of infinites like the mien
of a dreaded friend,
Since the terror has been forever standing by,
Tantalised by the good reign coming
Words from others
“I have not seen poetry of the eminence of Galatea brought forth by anyone so young as Melanie Challenger.”
“Her language is rich, dense, mosaiced — a post-feminist H.D. A very exciting debut.”
“The ravishing intensity of Challenger’s language makes this book so intriguing.”