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
Paul Connolly
Loading...
In my haste, distracted doubtless by the unwelcome reemergence of that historic ‘burn people out of their homes’ tactic, I forgot to add in the thread above 👆, which also contains a link to the text, that this is a poem for #poemsaloud
The aesthetic also demands that we doubt the sufficiency of everything we’ve ever written, everything we write as we write it, that we recognise our immediate & complex lyric imprisonment yet try, through reading, experience, through the formal transformation & even distance of poetry, to escape it
It became impossible not to reshare this after last night’s pogrom. Especially infuriating is the historical ignorance in any ‘analysis’ by news services. Their acceptance of right-wing talking points has made them accessories to the violence. Then there are the populists themselves #saevaindignatio
Somehow image alone will not do. Neither will recollection. Ideas will be both needed & insufficient. Any totalising theory would wreck everything. The aesthetic our condition seems to demand is as vast as us, the world we bring, the worlds we inhabit, yet just as uncertain, limited, even ridiculous
The original text can be found, along with two other poems, in the link below 👇
Through the here we apprehend distorted & incomplete via limited, shifting apertures of sense, we at once pour memory, fixed, unreliable, together with hope & terror. A gestalt: dynamic, ungovernable, protean, singular. A weirdness of entropy & change, an illusion of continuum, where poetry is born
This from @corinnaboard.bsky.social arrived today. Looking forward to it #poetrycommunity
Paul Connolly
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
