Paul Connolly

@thepaulconnolly

Writer Poetry: Debut collection due Spring ‘27 (Broken Sleep Books) Forward Prize/BOTN nominee 100+ poems in Agenda, Stand, Poetry Salzburg, Chiron Review, IS&T etc & on BBC Charles Causley & Bridport shortlists Prose: Orwell Prize/Bridport Novel longlists

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Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· 29d

Dark Night, Martha Sprackland’s translation of the poems & selected prose of St John of the Cross, arrived today. I’ve been really looking forward to it & mentioned it in my thread below👇about Dana Delibovi’s translations of St Teresa @marrrtha.bsky.social @danadelibovi.bsky.social #poetrycommunity

The cover of the Dark Night, Martha Sprackland’s translation of poems and selected prose by St John of the Cross published in Penguin. The cover shows a detail from El Greco’s The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, in which we see the hand of Christ placed above his kingly blue and red-purple robes and the hand of the righteous man he is receiving into heaven

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jul 11

Far better than his predecessor Mike Mercury #Supercar #supermarionatiom

The Gerry and Sylvia Anderson puppet of Supercar character Mike Mercury. His eyebrows are among the most sinister things in a 1960s childhood

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jul 11

Also arrived this morning a recommendation from @kirkdalebooks.bsky.social Rosalind Belben’s Dreaming of Dead People

Dreaming of Dead People by Rosalind Belben. On a cream background, those words followed by

I can be Robin Hood. or his dop-pelganger Hobbehode. at any moment of the day: pausing. I raise my eyes. and am in the fourteenth century. It's a version of galloping horses along verges and beside railway trains. On my sixth birth-day. we had a fancy dress party: no marks for guessing who I was.
Introduced by Gabriel Josipovici.

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jul 11

Two very interesting books have arrived this morning. First the Forward Prize-longlisted How the Water Held Me by Catherine Redford, which I am really looking forward to. @catherineredford.bsky.social #poetrycommunity

The front cover of The Way the Water Held Me by Catherine Redford. A rather marvellous painting of what appear migratory birds, geese possibly, flying above swirls of green sea and a small patch of orange-brown land

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jul 8

This arrived today. HOTEL PETROLEUM by Mark Fiddes. Published by @brokensleepbooks.bsky.social Very much looking forward to it @fiddes.bsky.social #poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky

The front cover of HOTEL PETROLEUM by Mark Fiddes published by Broken Sleep Books. On a white background, six white pillows in two columns of three in varying degrees of dishevelment, one of which, the middle pillow of the right-hand column, has a small lipstick smudge on it

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jul 7

However, this from the Belgian FA is without question the image of the day:

The Belgian FA’s Instagram account posts an image of Lukaku’s goal celebration in front of dejected US fans and an insert of the revolting Infantino and Trump onto which it has pasted the legend ‘Overturn this’

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jul 1

With a touch of Max Wall on top

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jul 1

Hydration break Happy birthday Debbie #hydrationbreak #atomic #debbieharry #blondie

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 29

When drafted this wasn’t really about him but about a certain libidinous will to power, immediate or by proxy, in the face of emptiness & what thwarts it, including our ultimate obstacle. But great personalities bend things to themselves. Which happened on Sunday #BenStokes #cricket #poetrycommunity

Ben Stokes, dressed in cricket whites, tattooed arms outstretched, appealing for a dismissal

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 28

Here’s my recording of my poem While Watching Ben Stokes, drafted only two days ago, shared for #poemsalound and @tomsnarsky.bsky.social’s #smallpoemsunday on the occasion of Stokes’ retirement as England cricket captain #TMS #EngVsNZ #BenStokes #cricket #TestCricket

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 28

I don't often share a poem in draft. But I started writing this on Friday. And...well... While Watching Ben Stokes by Paul Connolly #BenStokes #TakeABow #poetrycommunity #SmallPoemSunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

While Watching Ben Stokes

by Paul Connolly

Forward now into a place of sweat-
gob leather in mow and you at a run
and run, starfish potent. Time’s overlook

vanishes. A sinew-broil troubles us to
assail a summit in red flush or trapped
before in voices await stoppage or close

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 28

There are options for Socrates:

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 27

So what inclination do I have to record Empedocles on Etna, The Scholar-Gipsy, Sohrab & Rustum, Thyrsis, Cadmus & Harmonia or any other poem of Arnold’s I read & wrote about years ago? None. But I’ll end my threads about Dover Beach by celebrating an area where Arnold was world-class: Facial hair

A photograph of Matthew Arnold. Besuited, his hair parted, he sports gargantuan sideburns

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 27

Inspired by Samuel Barber and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (see below👇) I was encouraged to take a fresh look at Matthew Arnold’s dust-layered, school-recital poem. And soon I decided to read and record it. So here it is, my reading of Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ for #poemsaloud #poetrycommunity

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 26

Hey Stella!

Brando giving loads in A Streetcar Named Desire

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 25

I loved this so much I read and recorded it for #poemsaloud With thanks to @jolloyds.bsky.social here’s Orioles in the woods by Osip Mandelstam, translated by Clarence Brown and W.S. Merwin #poetrycommunity

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 24

I mean, what’s not to love about this frozen lake?

Gustave Doré’s engraving of the ice lake imprisoning the treacherous in the Ninth Layer of Dante’s Inferno. Dante, accompanied by Virgil, speaks to a naked figure, imprisoned up to his chest in a thick ice sheet

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 23

Always in motion of course, moving and moved, between urge and fear, yet perhaps today focused less on the dynamism, the kinetic drive, than on a preceding potential, contemplation, or a stalling, in shade, in cool, weighing a moment, or weighed in it, even at a moment of weighing, alone, in silence

A Woman Holding a Balance by Vermeer. A solitary 16th century Dutch woman, whose attire perhaps faintly suggests a Madonna, weighs coins and jewels in a room, curtained, with only minimal light entering, in front of a painting of the Last Judgement

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 22

I read this powerful threnody, Heron on the White Line of the Motorway, in @martinadalton.bsky.social’s poetry collection Midnight at the Saltmarsh, and thought of you @everyheron.bsky.social

Heron on the White Line of the Motorway, a poem by Martina Dalton from her collection Midnight at the Saltmarsh

In that instance all he was was eye,
wings shoved in pockets behind his back, sorry he could remember how they spread just yesterday

above that golden field,
the river's span.
All eye of storm, the fields around him spin, are drawn to him,

to his mistake.
Stuck to the road, he hides the blood
that must be turning tarmac red,
legs his only means of taking off

now broken underneath him.
It's stupid to rely on such fragile things:
to think he could belong
to other than the sky!

With nowhere left to hide he does what he has practised all his life.
Stoic and still. Grey as concrete
or the lining of the moon.

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 21

A bonus post - those flying spans at Gloucester Cathedral. Like flying buttresses, like groins, but actually most like what local people call them: coat hangers

The flying spans at Gloucester Cathedral. Unusual stone features on the choir arches. Like their local nickname: coat hangers

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 21

To end this thread 👆on Ivor Gurney & Gloucester Cathedral, here’s my recording of his war poem Strange Hells. It mentions his Gloucestershire Regiment & considers, with an arresting mix of directness, downplaying & evasion, what war makes people carry inside them forever #poetrycommunity #poemsaloud

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 21

Gurney suffered lifelong mental health issues, perhaps worsened by the Great War (he was gassed) & spent his last 15 years in psychiatric hospitals. He viewed himself as a composer first but wrote verse prolifically, including war poems. With Finzi he’s commemorated in stained glass at the cathedral

The Ivor Gurney windows at Gloucester Cathedral by Thomas Denny, with scenes from his poems. For more information visit https://www.thomasdenny.co.uk/the-ivor-gurney-windows-gloucester-cathedral

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 21

Yesterday I visited Gloucester Cathedral. Fan-vaulted cloisters. Tremendous flying spans in the choir arches. History. Tombs of Robert II of Normandy and Edward II (red-hot poker anyone?). And musical associations. Herbert Howells. Hubert Parry. Gerald Finzi. And tragic composer and poet Ivor Gurney

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 20

Look what arrived this morning. Midnight at the Saltmarsh by Martina Dalton. Really looking forward to this @martinadalton.bsky.social #poetrycommunity

Midnight at the Saltmarsh a poetry collection by Martina Dalton. Title and author pea green background surrounding a painting of sea, a shoreline and low sun

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 12

I’m there. And might bring my own vision of my ageing self…

The poet R.S. Thomas, every inch the misanthropic sage, bestriding moorland, his white hair windblown, tie unruly, long trench coat belted at the waist

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 10

This from @corinnaboard.bsky.social arrived today. Looking forward to it #poetrycommunity

The cover of the short poetry Mædwe by Corinna Board. (Mædwe is the Anglo-Saxon rendering of the word we now spell meadow and is likely to have persisted into Middle English - see wydwe for widow in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale). The title and the author’s name appear on a mustard cover on which, painted green, appear the stems, a leaf and spikelets of giant fescue grass faintly labelled taxonomically beneath Festuca Gigantea XLVII)

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 10

Recent violence & how it has been provoked by bigoted malevolents & rationalised in the media stir me to record my poem Cloaca Maxima, first published in @manchesterreview.bsky.social & share it for @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social’s #promptcombo theme #NothingMakesSenseNowadays #poetrycommunity

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 6

This arrived today. The How in the World by @louisepoetical.bsky.social. Looking forward to it

The cover of THE HOW IN THE WORLD by Louise Longson. A painting of a hare contemplating the moon

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 4

The gravestone of William Hazlitt in St Anne’s churchyard Soho, restored by public subscription in the early 2000s

Paul Connolly@thepaulconnolly· Jun 4

From the same article…