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Dialogue between the body and the soul

an exchange of poems by Melanie Challenger and John Kinsella

Photo by Roger Bishop

Introduction | In October 2007, the poets John Kinsella and Melanie Challenger were given the opportunity to meet for the first time at a reading to be hosted by the Harold Clurman Center for Poetry, Poetic Language, and the Spoken Word in New York. John had edited Melanie’s debut poetry collection, and this would have been their first opportunity to share their work in person. Earlier that year, Melanie had cancelled a flight to New York for environmental reasons but had not made the final decision against using stratospheric flights. On the other side of the world, John had already made the decision that such air travel was no longer justifiable. Via emails, they discussed why they could not meet for the reading. That was the starting point for this exchange, Dialogue between the body and the soul.

The poems | The poems are being published on the RSA Arts & Ecology website as they arrive. Follow the links below:

1. John Kinsella April 29 2009

2. Melanie Challenger May 04 2009

3. John Kinsella May 05 2009

4. Melanie Challenger May 10 2009

5. John Kinsella May 12 2009

6. Melanie Challenger May 18 2009

Background | An edited extract of the emails exchanged between John and Melanie can be read here.

Melanie Challenger writes a short piece about their decision to use the body and soul motif here.

Melanie Challenger’s first collection of poems, Galatea, won an Eric Gregory Award and was nominated for the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection. From 2007-8, she was Artist in Residence for British Antarctic Survey. She spent four months in Antarctica, sub-Antarctic islands, Falkland Islands and Chile, researching for her non-fiction work, Extinction, a comparative study of industrial, cultural, and ecological endangerments and extinction. She is Creative Fellow at the Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity at University College London, and is currently an Associate Artist at Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy.

John Kinsella is the author of more than forty books of poetry, prose, and criticism. He is an Extraordinary Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and was appointed the Richard L Thomas Professor of Creative Writing at Kenyon College in the United States for 2001, where he was Professor of English until 2005. He is also Adjunct Professor to Edith Cowan University, Western Australia, where he is a Principal of the Landscape and Language Centre, and a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. His most recent collections of poems include Shades of the Sublime and Beautiful and Divine Comedy: Journeys Through a Regional Geography, the latter described as a 'distraction' of Dante's original, and set in wheatbelt Western Australia.

2007's Disclosed Poetics: Beyond Landscape and Lyricism argued for a new type of pastoral poetry that reflected the urgency of our ecological situation, and laid out his opposition to modern agribusiness's ruinous effect on the world. Next year sees the publication of Activist Poetics.

He has worked collaboratively with many poets, fiction writers, musicians, and artists. A committed vegan and pacifist, he co-writes the blog Mutually Said: Poets Vegan Anarchist Pacifist. His website is johnkinsella.org.

Responses | Read the reactions of other writers and artists to the question of whether artists can justify travelling by air

Photo by Roger Bishop