Kidneys Failing

kidneys failing

he starts to close down

a bee in a puddle

Paul Conneally

On Tiptoe

Les Musiciennes du Temple, Victor Lagye (1825-1896)

spring festival

the littlest girl sings

on tiptoe

Paul Conneally

May 2014

Stray

she walks slowly from

the office to Charing Cross

looking at the floor

a few stray dandelions

and a pavement crack penny

Paul Conneally

Messages

she is so drunk 

that she cant't work her own phone 

but somehow can work mine 

so she texts her husband from my phone 

sending messages back and forth 

asking him to come and pick her up

she promises him sex 

he says 'I'll come straight away' 

and does but the next day 

she tells me he never got the sex 

she was too drunk and when

she got home she fell asleep

Paul Conneally

May 2014

On the makeshift map

on the makeshift map

I kiss

the lost cities

Alan Summers

The image is of the Haiku Jam jar labels made by Paul Conneally and featuring Alan Summer's haiku with translations / Japanese versions by Hidenori Hiruta.

The haiku jam was sold to raise funds for the Japan Earthquake Appeal 2011.

Small Creatures

searching for the small

creatures of a spring pond in

saturday morning

小春の池　土曜の朝の自然観察

tomomi iguchi

we bang our muddy boots

on the garden wall

paul conneally

Tanrenga composed during the build up to the Renewability Haiku Hike, Lower Lea Valley, London  as the Olympic Development Park was getting underway. 

The Renewability Exhibition took place in the Mile End Art Pavillion.

RAVISHING A UNIVERSE FOR LOVE!

Ravishing a universe for love!

Artists Anne-Marie Culhane and Paul Conneally show Mothra (June 17 2014) as part of the ongoing Fruit Routes / EAT YOUR CAMPUS works at Loughborough University.

They will show the film in a popup cinema garden shed on an allotment garden on Loughborough University campus. The garden is tended by Loughborough Students Landscaping and Gardening (Our) Society.

The film will be followed by a night of trapping and viewing moths on the Fruit Route.

The Fall of London - James Boswell

James Boswell - The Fall of London: Museum 1933 Lithograph on paper

In his series The Fall of London Bosworth gives us a city under siege but who from?

The Tate, where the lithographs can be seen, suggests that the images portray a London invaded by fascists. There are scenes of body strewn streets. Here, in Museum, a pile of dead people sits at the top of the steps, in others men hang from lamp posts.

This 'fascist invasion' interpretation is probably more palatable than the actual vision Bosworth was channelling, one not of invasion from without but from within. The people of London broken by unemployment, class division and poverty, rising up against itself as groups get behind a homespun fascist movement.

The lithographs are a particular vision of what London's streets could have become and in fact could still become given particular circumstances.

They are powerful images undermined somewhat by the Tate's view that they portray an outside invasion rather than contemplate that Londoners could in certain circumstances turn to fascism.

For those that wonder what a possible fascist or genocide perpetrator might look like take a look in the mirror and keep that face in mind.

The power for good and evil is in all of us, choose wisely.

Paul Conneally

May 18 2014

A Few Stray Crumbs

sat at his work desk

high up on the fifteenth floor

Geoffrey eats his lunch

a panini delivered 

by the Brucciani van

eighteen eighty two

Luigi Brucciani

arrives in England

footsore after having walked

all the way from Italy

he travels on to

Scotland where he makes ice-cream

he works up in Ayr

before moving to Barrow

to set up his own business 

this ice-cream parlour

becomes hugely successful 

his kids start others

Morecambe and Preston get

their own Brucciani

Leicester has to wait

'till nineteen thirty seven

for Brucciani

to appear in large letters

on a shop in Horsefair Street

Leicester folk love this

'oasis in the city'

an ice-cream haven

that Luigi junior

puts his heart and soul into

throughout the forties

fifties, sixties, seventies

the business expands

a bakery in Bath Street 

to prepare cakes and pastries

cafés open, close

Horsefair Street closing in

Nineteen ninety two

but Brucciani still thrives

as popular as ever

two cafés serving

delicious ice-cream, coffee

snacks, cakes and pastries

all made in their bakery

still located in Bath Street

none of this knowledge

disturbs Geoffrey's lunch break  

a glance at page three

he just knows a good sandwich 

from a run of the mill one

afternoon shadows

he brushes a few stray crumbs

from his workstation

Paul Conneally

Leicester 2013

Ancient Oak - Bradgate Park, Leicestershire

'Ancient Oak' - Paul Conneally 2014

This oak tree is around five hundred years old.

It stands in Bradgate Park, Leicestershire, the family home of Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England for just nine days before being usurped by Queen Mary who later had her beheaded.

Dead Whale's Teeth

'Dead Whale's Teeth' - Paul Conneally

Dead Whale's Teeth is a shreadlines piece.

Shreadlines are created by the artist poet cutting up headlines from a particular publication and putting them into a bag.

Each line of a shreadline piece is written by the artist poet by randomly picking five pieces of cut up headlines from the bag then using three or more of them to construct a new line. Any not used are put back in the bag.

The shreadline process was devised by Paul Conneally in 2000 where he worked with members of the public walking through Loughborough Market to make Easy Mother Expletives.

School's Out

school's out

the sound of sticks

pulled along railings

Paul Conneally

Waiting Room

waiting room

a fish through my pockets

to settle the nerves

Paul Conneally

A Bull and Two Cows

spring bluster

a bull and two cows

in the china shop

Paul Conneally

Hilversum

HILVERSUM - Paul Conneally 2012

mixed media valve radio with framed concrete visual poem - the radio dial set to HILVERSUM