Mark Connors - Poetry

Mark Connors - author and poet

Ilkley Literature Festival's Open Mic winner for 2014 and 2015!

"Mark's work is full of surprises. Sometimes mournful, always potent, and everywhere filled with good humour. Even at his most experimental, Mark's generous spirit shines through making for sometimes provocative, but always an inclusive, body of work."
Steve Nash

"The only thing equal to Mark Connors' enthusiasm for poetry is his own writing. To watch him take the stage and perform is to watch a tennis player waiting to serve the first ball of a Wimbledon final. There is a quiet hush, a slight shuffle, then his voice - strong and assured. It's no surprise to see him finally getting the recognition he richly deserves, both for the championing of other poets' work and for his own, often mesmerising, poems."
Tom Weir


Poetry

The Tree Song (after Philip Larkin)

Most trees die like smoking mothers,
Shedding colour, weight, day by day.
They keep some beauty in decay,
Sad-sap-sing to one another.

But they'll come back in spring;
Our mothers will stay where they're not.
Daffodils remind us we forgot
Mother's Day, phone calls. Little things.

We are there when it matters most:
In day rooms when we set them aside,
Ward vigils, Hollywood goodbyes.
And we talk, laugh, smoke with their ghosts.

Strix, Issue 3

Submission (for Brett Evans)

Please find attached three of my poems
to be considered for your next issue.
I am relatively new to poetry
and would appreciate your feedback,
providing it's positive and favourable.
I don't deal with rejection well
so I would advise you to be careful.
Thanks to Facebook, I know your hometown
and the pubs where you drink.
I enjoy the photos of meals you post –
those hearty dishes you concoct
and would love to come to your place
to discuss my work over a bite to eat.
I live up north but I just happen to be
in the area for a day or so.
In fact, I can be there in ten minutes.
I take it I have your attention?

Poetry Salzburg, Issue 32

Mono Lake

And if there's somewhere we could teleport
from a searing broken marriage

I'd take us back to Mono Lake,
to calcium deposits, those tufa towers

lifted from gatefolds of prog rock album covers.
We'd play dead in the lifeless water

and wait for a beige tsunami
to be riled up from the desert.

Like the ospreys we saw there, back then,
we'd rise up through the choking sand,

unbroken

and fly towards a harmless sun.

The Interpreter's House, Issue 63