Served In A Mug - Gavin Wade and Paul Conneally 2019

SERVED IN A MUG

you know my life
machines the arcades
oxeye daisies

tripping himself he falls
onto his broken hand

time passes
I carry on looking up
into the sky

Murdoch Priestly and Watt
coated in gilded bronze

I’ve got a feeling
we aren’t going to get
a fee for this job

she turns back smiling
and gives me a wave

it’s a funny thing
the half moon

scrolling Baburnama
she tells me with confidence
that tulips are from Turkey

a pint of bitter
in a straight glass

embedded assumptions
encoded in expecting
this seamless conformity

sunshine and showers
we’re going to take this
to the next level

Freya makes atmospheric
changes to the lighting

you’re a big man
in bad shape
behave yourself

quadrophonic sound
and feet on pink underlay

chilled to the bone
we make love
in our ankle socks

I take the call during
my keynote lecture

I miss you
I fancy you
I wish I was touching you

Tracey has a gin
served in a mug

I’d almost forgotten
what your eyes looked like
piss holes in the snow

plaster flowers captured
in bright sunlight

Gavin Wade and Paul Conneally
March 2019

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Notes 

‘Served In A Mug’ is a collaborative poem written originally as a series of tantwenga poems (tanrenga written via Twitter) presented here in a renga like format to be read aloud by two voices or in your head in two voices.

It ‘links and shifts’ to and from and includes direct quotes from the script of the British movie ‘Get Carter’ by Mike Hodges.

It is an intertextual intercranial collaborative poem rooted in the practice of renga poetry. The poem comes out of the ongoing Bred Pudding Collective’s work ‘Man From The North’ an original film script intended to move to film that in some ways mirrors ‘Get Carter’ in reverse written by the BPC’s Russ Ralph.

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Good Friday - Paul Conneally and Debra Woolard Bender 5-8-00

haikumania

linked poems created via electronic mail

Good Friday

a *loaforenga

Paul Conneally & Debra Woolard Bender

5-8-00

Good Friday

breakfast of hot cross buns 

on a cracked plate

pretty waitress - - the young vicar spills tea

wet warmth spreads through a brown tweed suit

soiled pyjamas thrown under the bed

potty full of flowers by the front door

seed packets on tongue depressors

ice lolly stick stuck in the drain

slow van trailing music and children

the neighbour's boy plays tin-can soccer

jersey and cleats in moth balls

six butterflies on the Lilac tree

garden wedding - - bride's mother wipes away tears

the taste of salt 

between two lovers 

fine times and foul

even the sea brings gifts 

to storm ravaged shores

a turtle buries her eggs in the dune

plastron - - future past written on shells

the milkman consults his book of changes

hanging on the wall - - no green bottles

baskets of pansies sway in the wind

this way and that - - a weathercock spins

cop on point duty waves to his dad

rail commuters race the whistle

marathon runners going through pain

quick ladders up her nylon hose

finding this time easier than the last

primary exam 

division problems solved 

on five fingers

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Loaforenga Instructions & History

The Loaforenga is a new-form renga. Hybrenga (hybrid renga)is the concept of combining several Asian verse forms into one renga-style poem. The Loaforenga hybrenga combines 4 verse forms, in one 5-sectioned poem: 

(1)Lorenga, (1)Forenga (2)haiku, (1)tanka

The hybrenga concept and Loaforenga form were created by Debra Woolard Bender and Paul Terence Conneally in April 2000. 

The Lorenga is a new-form renga created by ai li as shown on her website, "still." We have used the Lorenga to form part of the structure of our "Lost and Found" (Lo-a-fo-renga hybrenga. Paul created the Forenga as our counterpoint to the Lorenga form. 

The Loaforenga is most suitable for 2 or 3 players although bigger groups could play. The theme of the Lorenga's last line must be loss. The theme of the Forenga's last line must be something found. The Loaforenga follows the traditional renga linking rules throughout the entire poem. 

The form for two players is as follows:

Haiku/ A

Lorenga/ BABABABABAB (11 one liners/ last line refers to "loss") 

Tanka/ AAA BB 

Forenga/ ABABABABABA (11 one liners/ last line refers to "finding") 

Haiku/ B

____________________________________

The form for three players is:

Haiku/ A

Lorenga/ BCABCABCABC (11 one liners/ last line refers to "loss") 

Tanka/ BBBAA

Forenga/ CABCABCABCA (11 one liners/ last line refers to "finding") 

Haiku/ C

Poetry � Paul Terence Conneally (UK) and Debra Woolard Bender (USA)

ai li's 'New Linked Forms' has explanations and examples of a large number of new linked forms with guidelines - all of them are suitable for connecting and creating with others around the world via electronic mail or by connecting in the chemically coded world perhaps around the kitchen table or in the park...

back to linked poems made via electronic mail index

back to haikumania main index

Circle of Fire the World's First Renga Ramble Sheffield 2007

It's over eight years ago now since artist Anne-Marie Culhane and myself undertook the world's first ever 'Renga Ramble', CIRCLE OF FIRE, in Sheffield.

It was part of the Off The Shelf festival of reading and writing in October 2007 and with / for GROW SHEFFIELD.

Paul Conneally
November 2015

Rite Of Passage

his rite of passage

a freezer full

of mother's fruit pies

Verse 3 from the Acorn Bank leg of our Full Bloom Renga.

The a Full Bloom Renga followed the blossom moving through England's orchards from The Mother Orchard at Cothele House in Cornwall to Acorn Bank in Cumbria over a period of three to four weeks.

Full Bloom renga was conceived by artist Anne-Marie Culhane with Paul Conneally, Alec Finlay and Jo Salter for The National Trust, 2010.

The Quick Way - Anne-Marie Culhane and Paul Conneally 2007

The Quick Way

A twelve verse Junicho renga in the season of Summer, 16 June 2007 
Barracks Lane Community Garden, Oxford - from the renga archive.

A black bucket
filled with redcurrants
making jelly the quick way

there are many reasons
to celebrate

the magistrate offers
a road safety course
instead of a fine

rail track closed
due to snow

my phone is full
of your messages
which one shall I erase?

on the horns of a dilemma
finding it difficult to rest

bent double
a pair of students seek mushrooms
lit by sunset

we bring my geraniums indoors
together

in the east end
a line of bulldozers
moves through an allotment

this is my home
I lie flat beneath a vast sky

by the light of the moon
a frog sings
in a puddle

rain drenches
buds and blossoms

Anne-Marie Culhane (master poet)
Paul Conneally (host poet)
Catherine Naysmith
Oonagh Desire
Jo Salter
Dave Jones
Jenny Stanton
Anita Joice
Joseph Conneally
Colin May
Becky Didlick
Gaby Hock

HER EYES ARE WILD

warmer than summer
underneath the haystack
the English tongue

she drinks beer
from the supermarket
in the town square
feeding potato-chips
to pigeons and sparrows

how far I've travelled to find 
one need replaces another

her dog growls
at midnight revellers
coming too close
as she sleeps soundly
in the shoe-shop doorway

the night in my hair
turns black
burning stars

paul conneally & debra woolard bender
from The Wordsworth Papers




Wordsworth after Pickersgill by Susumu Takiguchi

Fajitas In A Teepee

Fajitas In A Teepee
Paul Conneally September 11 2010
Intervention renga with Watermead Estate community Thurmaston, Leicestershire.
Co-ordinated by artist Jemma Bagley for Charnwood Arts
Music: Judge Smut Dub by Dum Dum Dum 1979
Paul Conneally and Jemma Bagley return to Thurmaston revisiting the site that originally led to "The Sound Of Water" a psychogeographic / splacist exploration of Thurmaston, in the Borough of Charnwood, Leicestershire through a series of haiku walks, workshops and interventions with people that live and / or work in the area.
The Sound of Water was a piece of public art originally coming out of a Section 106 planning requirement for public art as part of the development of the old Merrimans site next to the A46 in Thurmaston into the new 'Watermead' housing estate. Conneally and Bagley were commissioned through Charnwood arts via Charnwood Borough Council to work with "community groups" to produce haiku like texts that could be incorporated into metal works of art by Richard Thornton in the new housing development.
Conneally and Bagley decided to approach the Thurmaston Action Group, that was actively campaigning against the 'Watermead' development, rather than just go straight into a school (which they did later) or such to generate textual material. The developers were not told that the group working with the artists to put texts into the new site were actively opposed to and campainging against the development. Approached by the BBC to talk about the project Conneally felt he would get a better understanding of what he was actually doing by asking one of the action group to speak, alongside Bagley, instead of himself and the interview itself became part of the piece: Sound of Water Interview

Fajitas In A Teepee sees the artists returning to the now complete new development and working with the new residents during an afternoon that was intended to bring the new community together. Fajitas In A Teepee is an "intervention renga" - non of the praticipants set out to write a renga - they were randomly approached by Conneally (Little Onion) in roving renga master mode to link with and shift away from the previously written verse as the renga built up on recycled cardboard around the playground in the centre of the estate. The artists took time to engage with and discuss resident and workers feelings about living and working in and around the new Watermead development including how the design and build elements affected their mood and style of living.
The video of the boards that were written in situ and attached to the wooden fence around the playground are not the finished piece. The piece was and is the interactions in and with the space and the people on the day.
We exchange places with spaces and in doing so both are changed.

Olympic

Here is a piece curently on show/in progress at The Renewabilty Haiku Hike Exhibition at Mile End Art Pavillion London UK:

The piece by Paul Conneally is a large wordsearch pinned to the gallery floor. The words come out of the deconstructed haiku that were written on the Renewabilty Haiku Hike through the London Olympic Development Site from Three Mills. Visitors are asked to engage with the walk, the individual walkers and the landsacpe walked through by finding a word and ringing it in one of the Olympic ring colours. The piece is finished when the wordsearch is finished or the exhibition finishes.