labournight & other poems (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781911100041)

Martin Connolly is Irish, from Belfast. He is a professor of literature at a university in Japan. He has published extensively on medieval English literature, Irish poetry (including Seamus Heaney) and the work of James Joyce, most recently working on Joyce's poetry. In 2015 he published a novella, 'Eri, a Japanese ghost story'. Snowchild Press. CRITICAL COMMENTARY: From eminent British poet, Gavin Bantock (author of Just Think of It, Eirenikon, Christ: A Poem in twenty six parts, etc.): "Martin Connolly has an acute eye for observation, a canny ear for sound and a unique way with words in expressing what he sees, hears and feels about things in the world high and low. His poems cover a wide range of topics from absolute realism to quaint fantasy, as titles like Elegy for a Convenience Store and The Snowchild testify. Open his book at almost any page and you will find an unexpected gem of an image or a pithy turn of phrase. He has a distinct voice of his own in a poetic world of fascinating interweavings of English, Celtic and Japanese fibres." From acclaimed Irish poet Lorna Shaugnessy (author of Torching the Brown River & Anchored, etc): "LABOURNIGHT & OTHER POEMS, Martin Connolly's first collection, takes the reader on a series of geographic, emotional and sensory journeys from 'The Helicopters' in North Belfast to the intercultural reflections inspired by 'Eating an apple on a commuter train in Japan', the poet's adopted home. In the collection's centrepiece, the long poem 'labournight', 'taut lines' are not only a feature of the mother's face but of the poem itself: gripping, real, it rollercoasters through the shifting rhythms and moods of a long labour from the expectant father's perspective. This is honest poetry, self-mocking rather than self-absorbed; it captures moments of absurdity and self-consciousness, exhaustion, fear and above all, intimacy. In many poems the world is rediscovered, as is language, aided by the company of toddler sons. But the reality of 'routine in among the wonder' is here too; the 'choreography' of the commuter, 'scrummaging for a seat'. Observations of the everyday are acutely captured in language that is fresh and flexible, as poems move fluently between the particular and Connolly's philosophical probing of 'the giant constructs of community'." Snowchild Press Official Website: https: //snowchildpress.weebly.com/