Long Pass is narrated by people who set out to communicate something simple and heartfelt, and who get caught up mid-expression in the social and linguistic complexities of communication: how can we say what we mean when language is made up with sets and sets of social values, cultural biases, linguistic tics, etymological convolutions and inconsistencies? Come to that, how can we explain what we feel to ourselves, when we do so in a common, intersubjective language? It’s a poetry which believes the most arcane quibbling of analytic philosophy and the purplest of sentimentality can’t be held apart; that stonily rational language often conceals or represses – and therefore implies – chaotic emotional depths, and vice versa. Long Pass is fascinated by the ways that translation, formal structures, jokes and word games can be a way of disrupting our ability to present ourselves as we unconsciously desire to do, and so become a way of being more honest or self-revelatory than honesty or confession.
About the Author
Joey Connolly grew up in Sheffield and studied in Manchester. Now he lives in London, where he is the manager of the Poetry Book Fair. His poetry and criticism have appeared in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Sunday Times and Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt), as well as on BBC Radio 4. He received an Eric Gregory award in 2012 and his first collection, Long Pass, is forthcoming from Carcanet.
