Paul Connolly
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thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Paul Connolly
@thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
16K followers 1.1K following 10K posts
Writer
Poetry: 100+ poems in Agenda, Stand, Poetry Salzburg, Chiron Review, IS&T etc
Poems on BBC
Charles Causley & (two) Bridport Prize shortlists
Magna Carta Comp (3rd)
Best of the Net Nominated (Lothlorien)
Prose: Orwell Prize & Bridport Novel longlists
Posts Replies Media Videos
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Ineluctable modality of Terpsichore
A B&W photograph of James Joyce, in late middle age. Dark jacket, white shirt, light tie, dark hat, spectacles, moustache
November 6, 2025 at 9:09 PM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
On this day, November 4th 1918, a week - almost to the very hour - before the Armistice, the poet Wilfred Owen was killed in action. He was 25.

Here is my recording of one of his most famous poems.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

#warpoetry #poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky
November 4, 2025 at 12:01 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
My recording of my poem Storms, first published in Guttural Magazine, posted here for @rfsmith.bsky.social's #promptcombo theme #storm #poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky #booksky
November 3, 2025 at 9:04 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Here's a piece for @rfsmith.bsky.social's #PromptCombo theme #storm Entitled, suitably enough, Storms. First published some years ago in Guttural Magazine. #poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky #booksky
Storms. A poem by Paul Connolly. First published in Guttural. Storms Soaked chino and skirt thighs pressed and scraped, or flapped and soared in Steerforth-felling gusts. Booze-brewed and sexed-up, cod-Gothic fallacies massed proof of selves, not both of us, which overthrew the other’s mouth, then ran into the storm I loved. I’d loved you always, fashioned anew in childhood’s thunderous night-times, where I spun your wind tales, cast you in abstract dramas. I didn’t itemise events, or note much more than vibrancies from tapped current, misprized the details. True love is detail. Storms like those drenched pawings were canvas. My son slides off a rain-smooth log today, falls, doesn't strike his head, cuts off blurt fears with wet enjoyment at slopping in a flash-flood pool. My dykes breach. I flood across felled trees, gates upended, meadows, then pull my lendings tight, cash-strapped amid shattered slate, damp walls, loss-adjustment.
November 3, 2025 at 9:04 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
A self-described deceived party deceives themselves & relishes the deception. Wonderfully wrought little rondeau by Thomas Wyatt, each assertion its contrary, each syntactic knot bespeaking future tergiversations. I could read it till the end of time & never exhaust it. Exactly what a poem should be
A rondeau by Thomas Wyatt What no, perdie, ye may be sure! Think not to make me to your lure With words and cheer so contrarying Sweet and sour counterweighing: Too much it were still to endure: Truth is tried where craft is in ure. But though ye have had my heart's cure, Trow ye I dote without ending? What no, perdie! Though that with pain I do procure For to forget that once was pure Within my heart, shall still that thing, Unstable, unsure, and wavering, Be in my mind without recure? What no, perdie!
November 2, 2025 at 3:01 PM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
He crops up in odd places, MC Hammer-Bronson
Michael Sheard as Adolph Hitler in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
November 1, 2025 at 4:15 PM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Here’s my reading of Isaac Rosenberg’s extraordinary Break of Day in the Trenches. #poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky #neveragain #warpoetry #WWI #poppy #rat
October 30, 2025 at 9:52 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
What joy to read such astonishing imagery, breathtaking, perilous! I’ve known the poem for years, known the context all my life, but each time I read it I find something new. Fearless, no quarter offered, no quarter asked

No compromise

I wonder if…they…

If so he got away with it. Just

She didn’t
A drawing of the Tudor poet and diplomat Thomas Wyatt by Holbein. On a pinkish orange surface a bearded young man, receding hair, jauntily set cap Whoso list to hunt. A sonnet by Thomas Wyatt Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind, But as for me, hélas, I may no more. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore, I am of them that farthest cometh behind. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore, Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, As well as I may spend his time in vain. And graven with diamonds in letters plain There is written, her fair neck round about: Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, And wild for to hold, though I seem tame. Portrait of Anne Boleyn, second queen of Henry VIII. Pale, hair centrally parted, French hood set back on her head, squarish cut to the neckline of her bodice, revealing an array of jewels including a necklace with a gold B from which three pearls dangle. Dark attire edged with embroidery. She holds a red rose. Above her the inscription reads ANNA BOLINA ANG. REGINA
October 28, 2025 at 5:49 PM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
And on the subject of Wyatt, there really aren’t that many better sonnets than this one. Nor are there many better illustrations of just how dangerous - creatively and literally - poetry can be.

Thomas Wyatt’s ‘Whoso list to hunt’. Read by me. #poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky #thomaswyatt
October 28, 2025 at 1:56 PM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Here’s the late great Prunella Scales, whom I met once on a truly surreal and brilliant morning with Glenda Jackson, in Hobson’s Choice (1954)
A black and white photo of Prunella Scales - a young woman in her twenties - in a high-necked late-Victorian frock, confronting an ageing man with his back to us (Charles Laughton) who sports a white shirt and dark waistcoat. A still from the 1954 film of Hobson’s Choice, Laughton as Hobson, Scales as his daughter Vicky
October 28, 2025 at 11:14 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
And next I turn to a very different poet again, John Clare, and find this:
Real excellence must be its own creation-it must be the over-flowings of its own mind and must make its admirers willing converts from its own powerful conceptions and not yield to win them by giving way to their opinions. CLARE: Essay on Landscape
October 28, 2025 at 10:38 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Warner’s Hamlet seems to have been consciously conceived as a New Left undergraduate
David Warner as Hamlet in Peter Hall’s mid-60s production for the RSC. Frowning, fringe of red-blonde hair combed forward severely, hands clenched together, he sports a fawn gown, draped over a black suit and white shirt, open at the collar revealing a vest, and while a red knitted scarf trails around his neck
October 28, 2025 at 9:11 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
And reposting full recording of my poem Branscombe Coast, read by me at the @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social open mic last night #poetrycommunity since it failed to load first time
October 27, 2025 at 9:35 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
The @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social open mic ended with a great privilege for me when our wonderful MC @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social asked me to play the session out by reprising my poem Distant Pigeon. Here's a recording of it

Black Bough open mics are brilliant. Highly recommended

#poetrycommunity
October 27, 2025 at 9:32 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Finally, I read my poem Distant Pigeon, published in Stand Magazine and shortlisted for the Charles Causley Prize, at the @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social open mic.
Distant Pigeon by Paul Connolly. Published in Stand Magazine. Shortlisted for the Charles Causley Prize Distant Pigeon Swift, cutlass-tight, it veered, then bodyboarded swells, an old-fashioned pocket kite at the mercy of sudden up-and-stall vents it hung, held and ticked over then spasmed, cut out and fell into the swallow of a gyre in a Waltzer, sickle-swooped twice, flailed, payed out its line and was itself in specimen splay then frittering on the fringe of light it emptied into hearsay.
October 27, 2025 at 9:32 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Here's my recording of my poem Zhu Bang's Fishermen, read by me at the @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social open mic last night #poetrycommunity
October 27, 2025 at 9:32 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
At the @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social open mic I also read my poem Zhu Bang's Fisherman, first published in Envoi #poetrycommunity
Zhu Bang's Fishermen. A poem by Paul Connolly. First published in Envoi. Zhu Bang’s Fishermen The high stone brazens at the sunshine whose glare forbids the waters anger and we punt into their cowering. The river is soft, nets slip deep, poles laze over the boat sides. We pull our garments loose from sun-sopped backs. Dusk will knell our efforts—we breathe already, even in these midday heaves and sweltering, we stretch and almost lie already, our boats tethered together underneath the tree fans, where the rocks will pour back day’s demands in vapour, and we’ll sprinkle offerings of laughter and thoughts across the water, dissolving before they sail into the main with the big ships, the madness beyond our centre of the centre of the world. O let no vanguards from faraway baronies shatter the upstream ford with spritzes of hooves, or swordsmen skitter on the gimcrack bridge down yonder, no tax-farming emissary from the senile lord bring fresh demands, and let the children stay home and carry no panting tales of lost pigs or the miscarrying threat that knots the heart behind our youngest comrade’s smiles, but let there be quiet and cool and nothing.
October 27, 2025 at 9:32 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
This is the full text of my poem Branscombe Coast which I read last night at the @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social open mic last night #poetrycommunity
Branscombe Coast. A poem by Paul Connolly, first published in The Dawntreader Branscombe Coast Eroded chalk bobbles nodular like an organism an exotic succulent or afflicted face mudstone looms in a sudden Colorado near bloodied sea the red cliff’s low portions throb out hearts arteried and veined with gypsum and spat gobs of stone gristle and bleached bone strew the beach and the sea flows round destruction and I am one come from afar who’s stumbled on ruin felled pediment and capital and scent the thrill and taste the agony of boundless possession
October 27, 2025 at 9:32 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
So. It’s the #spooky season. #Halloween approaches. But far more alarming than confected sprites are the impulses of our ambitions and promptings from the daggers of the mind. For #ShakespeareSunday this is me reading the dagger of speech from #Macbeth #poetrycommunity #Shakespeare 🗡️ 💀
October 26, 2025 at 9:36 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
We all smile eventually
An image of a human skull
October 22, 2025 at 2:46 PM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
My recording of my #poem Six Balloons, first published in Ink Sweat & Tears @inksweatandtears.co.uk #poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky #booksky
October 22, 2025 at 10:36 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
How everyone is looking at you now
A portrait of JS Bach. Bewigged, dark-eyed, ample-cheeked, sharp-nosed, severe
October 20, 2025 at 1:51 PM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
As many outside the UK can't use BBC Sounds here's the Vis Aeternitatis recording used in the Upload programme
My thanks again to the brilliant @takahemagazine.bsky.social The poem's had a good afterlife because of their kindness in publishing it during the pandemic🙏 #poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky
October 17, 2025 at 9:22 AM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
My poem Vis Aeternitatis👇published in @takahemagazine.bsky.social is getting featured on BBC Upload!
Thu 16 & Sat 18 October 6-8pm
Here's a link to Upload's SE site www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p...

I'll publish the programme link after the broadcast

#poetrycommunity #poetsonbluesky #HildegardofBingen
BBC branded red badge with white wording saying I'M GETTING FEATURED ON UPLOAD bbc.co.uk/upload Vis Aeternitatis. A poem by Paul Connolly, first published in takahē Vis Aeternitatis She wakes. Five hours till dawn. Matins to sing. Day will bring deer, scant waterfowl which swim between the scattered floes, a hamlet’s threading smoky life mark, framed in venial squints through crosslet holes by lowered eyes at Sext. Now paths to prayer are crept, no lamps but thin blue slants, the eternal sapphire she collects herself inside a moment, then looks. O vis aeternitatis. Snowy firs reflect moon blue. Beyond is dark. The wolves release what spirits they have, and like a lone raw crow or tower-flute winds, they break upon, increase and are night’s silence, owl-flight thick. The soul that’s ready falls into its dark. Shadows arch, night’s chapel populates, its doors, behold, are opened, evil’s wormy legions march with angels, come O Paraclete, stream forth afresh, come fiery, quench our pain, all parch for want of Thee, for look, he waits, the Wolf, he sniffs, merciful One, fill the world with breath or silent song at least, and hard, Thy love. She takes the dark to prayer, where she’ll confess. He plays the track again. She quickens nothing with a voice that’s nothing, God in wilderness.
October 15, 2025 at 4:25 PM
thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Peter Gabriel
Comedian Charlie Drake, ruddy faced, sporting a flat cap, denim top over a green and white polo shirt
October 14, 2025 at 1:22 PM