Boy Man World.

The boy in the world will wonder
The man in the world will strive

The world in the boy to open
The world in the man to thrive

Boy Man World is a collection of poems, reflections and lyrics* written over the last two decades, with one or two from earlier days: they are offered here as observations, contemplations and anecdotes for you to enjoy.

During the mid 1990’s I gratefully received a writing grant from Arts QLD with generous guidance and support at that time from Clare Hoey. The works to be written were intended for a compilation of pieces entitled ‘Boy Man World’, however due to collaborations with musicians Tye and Katie Noonan many of the works were repurposed as lyrics and the poetry book was not completed. Twenty years later and with a larger body of work to draw from I felt it was time to complete the intended work.

Perhaps these works reflect a journey, perhaps they point to a philosophy. I hope that in the least they tell a story that you can connect to and recognise. And so for the love and the good of all goes these poems.

With love
Martin

Foreword

These poems, this profound offering from Martin opens a space
to experience a tenderness, a keen attention to moments of importance and an invitation to awake into deeper friendship with who I am beyond the surface – and to befriend Life as it flows without choosing the right or the wrong.

It swirls me in a good way to flow in this brook of insight that flows from a pure and bold heart.

I am so grateful for this kind of gifting – and welcome the possibility for more to come in service of a simpler and kinder world we all long for whether we know it or not…….

Toke Moeller – CEO – Co founder of The Flow Game, The Art of Hosting and harvesting conversations and work that matters and the Warrior of the Heart dojo.

 

Endorsements

Upon hearing Martin Challis’s poetry for the first time i started singing. His words are beautiful – they evoke wonderful imagery in my head and inspire me to write melodies  – a true gift!  His words were the inspiration for my first album with my trio elixir and are still some of my very favourite words to sing.

Katie Noonan – Singer Songwriter

 

The poet Denise Levertov once said: ‘Insofar as poetry has a social function, it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.” For me, reading Martin’s poems wakes me up, again and again, to the gifts of humility, wonder and paying attention.

Shane Rowlands – Poet & Artist

 

I wonder if the name Martin from the name Mars could not be much further off? Oh But Yes! For he is a ‘Warrior of the Heart’!  In our world of striving for achievement, for excelling, for doing, for measuring ourselves against this expression of our Yang … Where is the still simple place of knowing of being rather than doing?  Through his poems the edges, the far shore, the liminal ‘perhaps it will not be so much further off’.

Jeff Renn – Performer & Director

Poem

An Invocation

The un-discovered country;
in his eyes
when he praises you.

He attempts to hide the nervousness
as the rate of his breathing increases.
His father never gave him praise. Never gave him glory.
Never it seems, made him the special centre of the moment.

And yet now he works this gift for you,
does so with no experience.
Is motivated by the desire to see you grow.
To see you swell with growing.
He stumbles over foreign land.

A son: your father.
Not measured by calibration.
Not perceived in weight or wonder but
as hard stone,
the slow carved mark
sharpened on generations born and to be born.

You walk with him.
Your hand in his.
The path new, well worn with wishing.

This image is an invocation:
Father and son, two friends like fire,
like kindling, like warmth

If we imagine this for many sons and
for many fathers
perhaps
it will not be
so much further off.

MChallis © 2015