John Challis was born in London in 1984. His first pamphlet of poems, The Black Cab, was published by Poetry Salzburg in 2017, and was chosen by New Writing North as a 2019 Read Regional title. His first full collection, The Resurrectionists, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2021, and highly commended in the 2021 Forward Prizes for Poetry. A second collection, The Green Parcel, will be published by Bloodaxe in June 2026.
His poems have appeared on BBC Radio 4, as well as in many journals and anthologies including Ambit, Clinic, Magma, The North, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review, The Poetry Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Forward Book of Poetry 2022 (Faber, 2021), The Rialto, Stand, The Land of Three Rivers (Bloodaxe Books, 2017), and The Telegraph. His poem ‘Thames’ was chosen as poem-of-the-week by Carol Rumens and published in The Guardian in September 2021.
In 2012 New Writing North awarded him a Northern Promise Award, and in 2015 he won a Pushcart Prize for his poem ‘Advertising’, the same year that the Poetry Trust selected John as one of the Aldeburgh Eight. In 2021 he was awarded an Authors’ Foundation grant from the Society of Authors to help him write his second collection of poetry.
John has held residences with Keats Shelley House in Rome, was a poet-in-residence with the Northern Poetry Library, and has written reviews and essays for publications incldhing Wild Court, PN Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and The Poetry School. In 2021/22 he was writer-in-residence at 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.
John completed a PhD in Creative Writing in 2015 at Newcastle University. His thesis was titled: The Knowledge, a collection of poetry, and The Poem Noir: Film Noir in Contemporary Poetry’.
He sits on the editorial board of Poetry Salzburg Review, and is Lecturer in Creative Writing at York St John University. He lives in York.