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Paul Connolly

@thepaulconnolly.bsky.social

15K followers 1.1K following 9.1K posts

Writer Longlisted for Orwell Prize Shortlisted twice for Bridport Poetry Prize Longlisted for Bridport Novel Prize Best of the Net Nominated in the Poetry Category Seeking publishers for poetry collection & novel

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 7d

I'm delighted to announce that
my poem Prefab (which can be found in the link below)
has been nominated for BEST OF THE NET
My boundless gratitude goes to @stridermarcusjones.bsky.social & @lothlorienpoetryj.bsky.social for nominating me 🙏

#poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky #BOTN

Five Poems by Paul Connolly

Lothlorien Poetry Journal Edited by Strider Marcus Jones Poet - Publishes poetry and fiction online and in print periodically. https://lothlorienp

lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 53m

Indeed. Balls when he was at Education spoke in the same terms. Sadly Burnham sometimes downplays HE’s importance for working-class advancement - despite being a beneficiary himself

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

🙏

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

But even a gloomy thread, or interweaving of several, can lead, by paths Ariadne wouldn’t have predicted, to uplifting discovery: that my connection @belshazzar.bsky.social is singing in the chorus on the Dona Nobis Pacem recording above. Perhaps not all our cries are lost in the void. Night all!

Reposted by Paul Connolly

Paul Brookes @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social · 2h

Hi @hool415.bsky.social Ju, here's my third response to your inspirational #promptcombo #Visitors:

Our Window Cleaner

speaks nine languages fluently.
Translates documents
for the university.

Someone stole his ladders
and his bucket, and trashed
his car.

Jehovah's Witness, his church
financed his visit to Hungary,
to speak to refugees
in Iranian and Arabic.

He bunked with a Japanese,
and says he could only speak
odd phrases to him.

Thoroughly polished
our windows gleam.

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

My pleasure. I’m really delighted by the serendipity. Hickox seems to have had an affinity for RVW, usually in the internalised and contemplative repertoire. But this is very abandoned, much more than anything I have ever heard with him holding the baton

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

😂😂😂

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

What brings this on? Here’s yesterday’s thread, with its questions about art, its ambition & impotence, its role in the pursuit of peace. And some more of the music that occasioned the thoughts

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1d

Mahler 5. I remember who I was when I first heard it. I wanted to change the world. With art. My goal sat alongside an appreciation of the world’s complexity. Which hasn’t gone. But now the world reaches into our lives. Horribly. Whatever our reach back, perhaps with art, we’ll struggle to change it

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1d

Another day dominated by the brainless racist shits who occupy the UK’s commanding heights.

And so something to lift the spirits. Something higher. Something better…

(Solti’s drive doesn’t always work with Mahler. Here it does…)

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

Terrific recording 🙏

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

The fact that he addressed Henry McGee as Mummy indicated a fertile imaginative range, of invaluable potential as a lover

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 1h

This is the LSO with Hickox. Is that you?

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 2h

And let my cry come unto thee. So says the psalmist. So too Eliot. The world’s noise converges on us for sure, harsh, aggressive. But when we make to cry back in pain, to whomever, whatever, the words die on our lips. We can’t seem to cast them into the void between us. And the void won’t carry them

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 2h

The art I love has always been hard, especially music, at once uplifting & desolate, fearless in its grasp of pain, adding to it with harsh sublimity. But it is also a pause. Suspension. Now the feeling when it ends is even less consoling. The absence is filled with a dire & relentless present tense

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 2h

No. RVW’s transcendence bears the grief that necessitated it. And it’s a human power, to be deployed, as here, for good or wonder, but also for terrors, and carrying as all human things do its own absurdity. So no. The sound died to haunting, soft, ambiguous chords, suggesting the emptiness of space

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 2h

Yesterday I posted on art & peace. Walking tonight I tried RVW: Dona Nobis Pacem. Grim need. Sorrow at war. Yet also a violence not to be fled but transcendent. Musical escape. Around me leaves bloodied. Sky cracked open. Voices soared. Would we leave life in storm like Romulus, in fire like Elijah?

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Dona Nobis Pacem

YouTube video by olla-vogala

m.youtube.com

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 5h

That’s very kind indeed 🙏🙏🙏

And nice to meet you

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 5h

All published before but some of them hitherto *uncollected* (ie in periodicals but not in his previous collections). 1200+ pages

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 5h

🙏

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 6h

In truth though I always preferred The Water Margin, with bonus Burt Kwouk narration and a magnificent theme song performance at the end

The Water Margin

YouTube video by Music4you889

m.youtube.com

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 6h

‘The nature of Monkey was IRREPRESSIBLE!

Born from an egg on a mountaintop…

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 7h

You’ve captured it really well here Victoria and how an anxious space can become meditative, even a refuge

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 7h

Thanks Lawrence! Hello @marjorywrites.bsky.social and welcome. Please feel free to explore the starter packs! People are very welcoming here so you should get a lot of follows back

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 8h

Thank you Caitlin…(though I’m not sure I believe in me…)

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 8h

I know where it’s ‘hidden’. I must not give in to temptation…

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Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 8h

I am hoping for notes as long and involving as in the magnificent Ricks/McCue T.S. Eliot complete poems or the great Longman edition of Paradise Lost or the wonderful old Arden Shakespeares. Then I won’t be contactable at all over Christmas. No one will be able to reach me

Paul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 8h

The good news is someone has bought me this. The bad news is I won’t see it until 25th December

The front cover of the poems of Seamus Heaney, compendious Faber edition, edited by Bernard O'Donoghue and Dr Rosie Lavan with Matthew Hollis

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