Tamsyn Challenger

Pamenar Press
Oct 19
2 min read

Challenger is a multi-disciplinary artist. Her visual work has explored wide-ranging sociopolitical themes, including gender violence and precursor work on selfie culture. It’s been featured in the Guardian Newspaper’s Top 5 Exhibitions list twice. She’s produced documentary radio for the BBC including ‘My Male Muse’, which became a BBC radio 4 Pick of the Year in 2007. Her poems are published in Anthropocene, Osmosis Press, The AI Literary Review, Skirting Around Magazine and Permeable Barrier. Filmpoems have been officially selected by StAnza Poetry Festival’ ‘25, ‘Beyond a Frame and a Soft Place’ at the Millennium Film Workshop, NYC, and the Women in Word Literary festival ‘24. The film poem 'Fret' was subsequently published by Ink, Sweat and Tears in 2024. Her first book of poems will be published this autumn by Osmosis Press.

22 minutes

Say, did you hear the one about the sitcom that was 22 minutes long? Or a mystery object in the sky emitting radio waves every 22 minutes since 1998? 22 minutes is a goal for runners; a plasma fusion model. 22 minutes revolves around Magnetism. Polarity forces at work. And I can’t shake it off. These are the things I think. A rattle-scape for the brain. Magnetised but polarised. I am light that vibrates in only one frame. These reverberations are no tickle. A particle push cloud thick with too much information. Rupture rapt. Stay silent and completely still for 22 minutes at a time.

Nuclear fusion minutes.

No contact means no contact, but for the constant alertness, my every fibre magnetised minutes, those 22 minutes.

That’s all it takes, the drive between us.

Rattle Snake

I don’t want to see you. Please don’t contact me anymore

The line went dead

A cartoon version of ‘off with her head’

I don’t want to see you.

Apropos of heart gristle

I paint your mummy mask

Your deadening silence a curdle whip

Wounded hand held tight my reins