thepaulconnolly.bsky.social
Writer
Longlisted for Orwell Prize
Shortlisted twice for Bridport Poetry Prize
Longlisted for Bridport Novel Prize
Looking for help to move things on
5,410 posts
11,999 followers
1,091 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
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Thank you Victoria. My pleasure! 🙏💙🔔s
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Congratulations Lucy!
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Judging by the posts, repetitious, cut & paste, it’s possible that they simply don’t get the significance of the hashtag & just use it - with multiple others - to get noticed. It’s also possible it’s a bot. There’s one ‘poet’ who replies automatically certain hashtags who I’m not convinced is real
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I just had a look. The one I saw has one follower and follows six…which seems about right
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Perfect
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Thank you
And that’s very true. They never look right in a garden.
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Thank you so much Carolyn. As I have said to a few others on here, once I noticed that the thin and beautiful bluebell scent seemed to intensify as the flowers were dying, I became a bit obsessed with them for a while. Thanks as ever for being so kind 💙
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What a satisfying consequence of decay David, beautifully celebrated
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You know, there is also another one for #decay and #promptcombo
@victoriaspires.bsky.social
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😂
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Thank you Stefano. And I have very much enjoyed your contributions to this theme too!
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🙏
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The obsessive extremity is the issue, the me me me zeitgeist, from rich vampire Californians getting cosmetic blood dionations from the poor & tech bro experiments with cyborgisation to more commonplace attempts at self-perpetuation. Huxley was good on this in Ape and Essence and After Many a Summer
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Thank you so much Linda. I find bluebells very affecting, for many reasons, and I am glad that seems to have come across 🙏💙
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Thank you Jan. That’s very kind indeed. Today I’ve been compared to Swift & Dante. I must make a note of the date. 😀 I wrote this in a state of rage & while I can’t match Swift, I believe, unlike those who are my targets here, in the consolations of the state where ‘ulterius cor lacerare nequit’💀💀😂😂
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Thank you Jan 🙏 And just to say I have been rereading your poems on the theme. Again, death is very near 💀
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No, but I got a firsthand account of it from the critic I most admire, and am certain that he was stunning
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Yes I loved his Richard, Monica. In fact, I love pretty much everything I’ve seen him do, a truly poetic actor. I remain devastated that I missed his Hamlet
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Worth it though 👇
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Thank you so much Sue. I love the smell of lavender and the sight of a lavender field and I bet your poem captures that scent beautifully
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The casting is uneven overall. But the film is a reminder of the excellence of Keats’s letters. And BW is absolutely luminous
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Alas! Look after yourself Debbie - and I will try to warn you if a poem of mine has excessive olfactory content🙏
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Actors often exercise a kind of cognitive dissonance, in which the necessities of their career are separate from their politics. Voiceovers for dubious businesses, accepting a brand-enhancing honour with ‘British Empire’ in the label. But especially those who can afford to should stop this nonsense
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Brilliant this one from Sue, isn’t it? I love how it seems on first view to jag and jolt, not unlike a rollercoaster, as a seeming collision of non sequential ideas a pattern which then illustrates the (in fact) utterly coherent sentiment the words form. Micro magnificence
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One of my favourite images of bluebells. Fanny Brawne reads a letter from John Keats in Jane Campion’s film Bright Star, which features a staggeringly alchemical performance from the great Ben Whishaw (he *is* Keats)
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One of the most commonplace locations of decay, brilliantly evoked here Jude
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I’m envisaging supplies of antihistamine 👃🤧🪻💐🌹😂
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Ah, Carolyn,
Voi mi levate sì, ch'i' son più ch'io.
You’ve made my day…
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🙏
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Thank you so much Julian 🙏
💙🔔
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😂 🤕 Thanks Debbie. An individual bluebell’s smell is almost imperceptible, but all together they do something though it’s very subtle. It’s almost as if they make the air fresher and just gently wash it with the tiniest trace of perfume. Very, very hard to describe. And almost nonexistent in memory
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Putting this bluebell #decay thread in the chat for ease of access by a brilliant #PromptCombo guru @victoriaspires.bsky.social
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Here's my recording of my #poem Bluebells first published in @inksweatandtears.co.uk shared here for
@victoriaspires.bsky.social's #PromptCombo theme #decay #poetrycommunity #booksky #poetry #vss365
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Bluebells became a bit of a creative obsession for a while, short-lived and sweet in #decay The brilliant @helenivory.bsky.social at @inksweatandtears.co.uk published my #poem Bluebells. Shared again below #PromptCombo @victoriaspires.bsky.social #poetrycommunity #booksky #vss365
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My recording of my #poem The Smell of Bluebells, first published in Nine Muses Press, for @victoriaspires.bsky.social's #PromptCombo #decay
#poetrycommunity #poetry #booksky #vss365
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😀
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The fusion of erosion and grandeur, found in the expression ‘green velvet/decay’ is sustained throughout the rest of the poem, Beth, with an increasingly sinister edge. 👏👏👏
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Just wonderful Ulrica, and a beautiful film too
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The inevitability of entropy and decay, both horrific and beautiful - lovely meditation Debbie
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Thank you so much Carolyn for reading this with such care and generosity. Those stories of the pursuit of eternal life by the tech billionaires make me very angry - as do the many more widespread variants of this particular form of ‘me first’ materialism. Glad my range came across 🙏💙