Sign in

Mark Connors

@markconnors.bsky.social
530 followers 466 following 26 posts

A widely published poet, novelist and creative writing tutor, based near Skipton. Co-managing editor of Yaffle Press and Yaffle's Nest. Running and music take up much of my spare time. Website: www.markconnors.co.uk.

PostsRepliesMedia
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Day 21 Glendalough He assumed the Perth suburb would have some vague affinity with its Irish County Wicklow namesake but it was full of car showrooms and americanised retail parks. Still, it was the place to come for a new kitchen so there was that. And burgers. #365tinytales #vss
040
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Day 20 WA Summer Watch I spot him, his shaved, peached head bobbing up and down in the snake riddled roadside bush above Jindee Beach, with no reason to be there but personal business, whether that be nature calling or some specific death wish. #365tinytales WA SUMMER WATCH
031
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Day 19 Don't Judge Me I've locked myself in the bathroom. The four kids are looping on an argument about screen time. It takes them forty-five minutes to realise I've been here too long for a bath. They start to scream MUM one by one. It culminates in a bellow from my eldest son.
020
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Day 19 Before Dont look behind the screens that promise you an ideal life: walks to pristine beaches, shady tree-lined streets. This is what your village looked last year: dust, scrub and bush, riddled with snakes who crave this searing sun tp warm their cold blood. #tinytales #vss
010
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Day 18 Bigger Everything is bigger in Australia: the snakes, the bats, the spiders, magpies that swoop down to try and kill you, dragon flies the size of Tonka toys, the unrestrained egos of its cricket players. #365tinytales #vss
020
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Day 17 Oblivious Brief Encounter He loved giving his daughter her first fishing lesson at Eden Beach a week after arriving in Western Australia, blissfully unaware of the brown western snake inching gently by. #365tinytales #vss
000
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Day 16 Alkimos Crow Even the crows sound Australian; a simple morning caw, full of mocking scorn, reserved for ashes banter; the spirit of Shane Warne alive and well here in Western Australia. #365tinytales #vss
230
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Yesterday's News I see a message on messenger from my brother the moment I sit down on a nice warm toilet seat for my first pee of the day, a pleasure marred only by a tsunami warning after an earthquake in South West Japan. I google it. No one was hurt. The warning was dropped
000
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Lawson He buys curry bread from Lawson, his go to convenience store in Arashiyama. Think jam donut with curry, not jam. Think an unthinkable spike in his blood sugar. Think about the fucks he doesn't give when carbs taste this good. #365tinytales ##blueskystories #vss
000
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Day 13 Shinkanzen window There's snow on the ground south of Nagoya. He thinks of the snow back home, how he's in no rush to go back. But he will soon start to miss his cats. Now, He feels time stretch away in front of him, like the railway tracks to Kyoto. #365tinytales #vss
000
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Day 12 Tokyo Sunday He stops running to watch a little league baseball game on a thread-bare sports field on the fringes of Adatchi City. Number 22, about the same modest height he was at his age, strikes a good pitch perfectly, and runs towards first base. #365tinytales
000
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Day 11 Second Hand Tokyo He entered the smoking room in Asakusa, inhaled the putrid emissions of the four men filling it with fumes and then went back out into the bright blue air, realising he wasn't missing it half as much as he thought he was. #365tinytales
040
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Day 10 Pill Fatigue He's so tired of forgetting if he's already popped his four daily pills. She buys him a special box so he can keep track but using it reminds him how much he needs such things these days, so he won't, not that he's stubborn or anything. #365tinytales #vss #blueskystories
010
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Tokyo Blues He watches a red kite circling blue sky above Sumida River, like he does above Leeds. He's not homesick, but reminded that distance is sometimes an illusion. Familar raptors follow him, watching, content and smug in their artful yet ordinary symbolism. #365tinytales #Vss
031
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Run She runs by the Simida River, as she's done every day since he passed. She stops mid-stride to watch two love birds gazing at shining water, remembering how they'd always leaned on each other, and how leaning on each other was far more than a metaphor. #365tinytales #VSS
052
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
Run She runs by the Simida River, as she's done every day since he passed. She stops mid-stride to watch two love birds gazing at shining water, remembering how they'd always leaned on each other, and how leaning on each other was far more than a metaphor. #365tinytales #VSS
000
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales Winter in Chuo Ward He longs for snow to come in the cold and late small hours. He wants to watch Dontonbori's neon mania play out above the untrodden black light of Shisaibashi Street before tomorrow's Instawarriors come and turn it all to grey slush. #365tinytales #blueskystories
010
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
365 Tiny Tales 365 Tiny Tales Day 6 Nameless They've agreed he will call her 'love' from now on, not that he'll remember. She hates it but it beats watching him dredge his memory for 'Linda.' #365tinytales #dailyblueskystories
010
Reposted by Mark Connors
Kathleen Jamie @kathleenjamie.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
A wintery poem…
38018
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 05/01/2025
Day 5 Amber warning I wheel my suitcase through fresh snow, from the hotel to the airport. It's 5 am. Terminal 2 is teeming with passengers, flying from departures and to arrivals like it's the most normal thing in the world. Who the fuck are they trying to kid? #365tinytales ##blueskystories
010
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
Day 4 On the towpath 'Was that the otter?' 'No. A mink.' 'Really? I saw one here yesterday, that's all.' 'Mink. They come here for the crayfish.' 'Mink are small. It was an otter, yay big.' 'We don't get otters here.' 'Well, I got one yesterday.' 'No you didn't.' 'Yes I did.' #365tinytales
020
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Day 3 I want to pet one I look again. They're not big dogs but tiny horses, like the one in The Handsome Family song. I start to walk over to the women walking them. Fuck. They are dogs, big fuckers. I don't want to pet them and we all know where I should've gone. #365tinytales #blueskystories
011
Reposted by Mark Connors
Suzanne Frischkorn @suzfrischkorn.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Joy is an act of resistance. —Toi Derricotte
16424
Reposted by Mark Connors
MoMA Paintings and Sculpture @moma.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Reginald Marsh, In Fourteenth Street, 1934 botfrens.com/collections/14377/cont…
Gift of Mrs. Reginald Marsh
0457
Reposted by Mark Connors
MoMA Paintings and Sculpture @moma.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Alexandra Exter, Theatrical Composition, c. 1925 botfrens.com/collections/14377/cont…
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Sackner
0618
Reposted by Mark Connors
MoMA Paintings and Sculpture @moma.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
Liubov Popova, Painterly Architectonic, 1917 botfrens.com/collections/14377/cont…
Philip Johnson Fund
05910
Reposted by Mark Connors
MoMA Paintings and Sculpture @moma.bsky.social · 03/01/2025
José Clemente Orozco, Barricade, 1931 botfrens.com/collections/14377/cont…
Given anonymously
06512
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
#Tankawanka Day 2 The second day My world is water every field is a new lake beautiful and sad the becks are bloating rivers roaring to the nearest sea
000
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Day 1 #Tankawanka Day 1 New Year's Day The new year starts with floods bloated river torrrent mind have burst their banks here comes the sky with colours here comes hope with its sandbags #tankawanka
010
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Respair Thanks to @susiedent.com he learns an old word to use time and time again, in hope he'll recover from despair himself. 2024 had been a year he'd rather forget but there is always fresh hope when one discovers old words to bring it. #365tinytales #dailyblueskystories #@susiedent.com
000
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 01/01/2025
Dream Fiction #1 She thought about her dream involving Cher, how she was Cher, how Cher was she. How they turned back time, used autotune to correct each other's mistakes. How they strived to live in a world without heroes. How they both believed in life after love. #dailyblueskystory #365tinytales
040
Reposted by Mark Connors
Susie Dent @susiedentwords.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
Word of the Day is one I keep posting at the end of the year, hoping its time will come. ‘Respair’, from the 16th century, is fresh hope, and a recovery from despair. Here’s to a few drops of respair in 2025.
20299462655
Reposted by Mark Connors
MoMA Paintings and Sculpture @moma.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
William Baziotes, Dwarf, 1947 botfrens.com/collections/14377/cont…
A. Conger Goodyear Fund
0678
Mark Connors @markconnors.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
Hello Blue Sky! After 17 email verifications, I am here!
4190