Empty Air

New Poems 2006-2012

Connor Tony

Tony Connor's tenth collection is framed by military encounters. In the first poem a young man grapples with a malfunctioning machine-gun, while the author grapples with the poem he is making from this event, memory or fantasy. In the surrealistic sequence that ends the book, a strange army invades a country collapsing into societal and semantic dissolution.

Connor's abiding preoccupations continue into his eighties: his own life and the lives around him, passing time and its traps, poetry and its transfiguration of the commonplace. Yet all is not solemn as Connor extends his range into comic verse and dramatic dialogue. His new poems mix fantasy and reality in unexpected ways, always with the unobtrusive hand of a skilled craftsman.

About the Author

Tony Connor was born in 1930. He left school at the age of fourteen and worked as a textile designer in Manchester for many years. His first collection of poems appeared in 1962; he is also a playwright and librettist. Since 1971 he has lived mainly in Middletown, Connecticut where he was a professor of English at Wesleyan University. His plays have been performed on both sides of the Atlantic. He now divides his time between Middletown and London.

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