"I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain. I absolutely loved your book Sarah it teased out memories of my emotions, I felt would drown me, when I was a child and I was bitterly disappointed you did not manage to bring a comforting and satisfying conclusion to your heartache. Sean O'Brien. Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but OBrien is capable of more complex things. And its not just through luck either. Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times. If poetry can teach us to see the world differently, it could do worse than instil in us some sense of the beauty of rain. Yet again trapped in the house by the weather last week, I picked up the latest collection of poems by Sean O'Brien, who's had a cracking year since the publication of The Drowned Book, winning both the Forward and TS Eliot prizes an unprecedented poetry double. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. He taught at Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989. Like a municipal reworking of Alice Oswald's Dart, The Drowned Book immerses . HI Jacqueline Wide, dark waters that grow in the telling, The idea of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud. Who staffed her army of the night: If so, I look forward to reading it. His poem "Arcadia", for example, describes a journey in a rowing boat across a lake in a fantastical garden with a touch of mythical strangeness. There are elegies for friends and fellow poets; paranoiac, brooding pastorals; other poems lay bare the maddening trials of a historically literate mind as it attempts to navigate a world gone post-content, post-intellectual, and at times post-memory. Rewritten. He often talks of his childhood in the bulildings. This is done both with artful solemnity (Arcadia) and playfully, where Timor Mortis finds OBrien at his funniest on the indivisibility of humankind when it comes to condemnation: The wonks who work the cutting edge, X. just finished rooms of dust. Will be the major threat. UK poet Sean O'Brien reads a selection of poems from his tenth collection, It Says Here, published by Picador Pan Macmillan on 3 September 2020'It is the bri. Gerry Wardle. Join Zeno, Zog and Baudelaire Last month saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for "intense bursts of rain". Then I might perpetrate Start your Independent Premium subscription today. I am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then. I enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. I felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your book down. Toward the end, the moving waterways are brought overground and replaced by railways a manmade development which OBrien can endorse and the feeling is carefully optimistic; allowing, of course, for the odd journey to hell. An absolutely novel crime It is reassuring that poetry of this quality is still being written. - Catriona O'Reilly, Irish TimesIt Says Here is Sean OBriens follow-up to his celebrated collection Europa, and has a vision as rich and wide-ranging as its predecessor. Than asset-stripping mountebanks All travellers not yet on board My daughter is fifteen, i seperated from her father when she was four years old and when she was eight her father decided not to see her anymore. Your story is very poignant to me but also written with great wit and warmth . wonderful! O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. And absolutely out of luck. Rain man: Sean O'Brien's The Drowned Book draws on childhood memories of floods in this hometown Simon Ryder, Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in, Please refresh your browser to be logged in, Right as rain: Why poet Sean O'Brien thinks a waterlogged garden in a, Extra 20% off selected fashion and sportswear at Very, Up to 20% off and extra perks with Booking.com Genius membership, $6 off a $50+ order with this AliExpress discount code, 15% off orders over 15 with this eBay discount code, Compare broadband packages side by side to find the best deal for you, Compare cheap broadband deals from providers with fastest speed in your area, All you need to know about fibre broadband, Best Apple iPhone Deals in the UK February 2023, Compare iPhone contract deals and get the best offer this February, Compare the best mobile phone deals from the top networks and brands. The Drowned Bookby Sean O'Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99. You'd think that gardeners, at least, could see this as a blessing, but there's been all kinds of horticultural problems as a result of waterlogging. Of course, if you venture out, you'll get soaked. I am haunted by the idea of the pubs in the old part of the city having their cellars flooded, and I'm intrigued by the idea that the floodwater might somehow insinuate itself into the beer.". Branch libraries and playing fields Every geranium has mildew; every pear tree, sooty mould. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self With so many childhood memories touched by water, O'Brien began to compile a collection, little knowing it would end up being published in a year that saw such an abundance of rain. And an enormous range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end. Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book which makes it all the more real to me. My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. "There is something about the rain," he says, "that is both heart-breaking and consoling.". True to its title, Sean O'Brien's latest collection oozes water. It hasnt happened yet Just think, if Im not found in time, Poet Sean O'Brien was born in London, England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull. I thought that poets were supposed to be sensitive souls! Poetry has succeeding in reshaping gardening taste before. It's a collection that is convincing enough to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens. For in our time the future tense And even if you wait for the rain to stop, you still have to be wary of the shower that the plants covered in raindrops tip off on to your clothes as you brush past. Bob Young, http://www.dublin.ie/forums/forumdisplay.php?28-Harold-s-Cross-Ranelagh-Rathgar-Rathmines-Terenure. "Praise of a Rainy Country", meanwhile, written in memory of the Northern writer Julia Darling, whose premature death touched O'Brien personally, takes place in a drenched world with something of the 1970s about it. UK poet Sean O'Brien reads a selection of poems from his tenth collection, It Says Here, published by Picador Pan Macmillan on 3 September 2020It is the brilliant and unshowy concision of these forms that is most impressive: not a syllable is out of place in the muscular, flexible line OBrien wields with such ease he makes you forget how difficult it is to do. Where the river road carries us now. The Calm. It amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding. Ive just finished reading your book Sarah, it might be out of print, but its still available at my local Library. Our history, it seems, is quite Strange: no one nowadays admits Yes Rooms of Dust a great book indeed brought back loads of memory to our family, You might like to have a look here and also show your Dad Michael. Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don't They. Who witter, witter, Im, like, why? However I dont find much poetry that I actually like. I will try to make contact again on Dublin Forums. #atlantisalostsonnetmalayalamsummary#atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetsummary#atlantisalostsonnet#evanbo. Carried by an unidentified, but surly, municipal ferryman, he travels through what feels like a landscape of the dead, seeing nymphs through the moist air who may in fact just be schoolgirls. (LogOut/ Rain falling incessantly on gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets "like imperial clockwork". Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. As conscripts of le grand nowhere Sean O'Brien is a British poet, critic, novelist, short-fiction writer, professor of creative writing at Newcastle University, England, and a Fellow of the UK's Royal Society of Literature. O'Brien has every chance to pull off a similar trick. Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. Eliot prize. i couldnt put it down. Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, Pretty soon, when the presses crank up for a new OBrien collection, all the other poets in the land will keep their powder dry till next year. Great Britain! Deliver rather lower yields In both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor. Well, really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp. Poems by Sean O'Brien. Poems by This Poet. its his loss though that is no consolation to you. It was exciting. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Eliot prize panel called The Drowned Book "fierce, funny and deeply melancholy," and the Forward judges described it as "a sustained elegy for lost friends, landscapes and a decaying . how sad that sean didnt get back to you. How disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory. Sadly, I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting. Can rake in flogging dope and tanks: Are you planning to write a follow up to Rooms of Dust? I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it. it is not so freely available as one might like to think. "It's a mixture of a real park in Hull, called Pearson Park, with some changes made for my own purposes." Eliot prize panel called The Drowned Book fierce, funny and deeply melancholy, and the Forward judges described it as a sustained elegy for lost friends, landscapes and a decaying culture. Well, one of the people featured I am pretty sure OBrien would not consider a lost friend. A whole summer goes past where it never stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results. Thank you for opportunity to comment. Some with slow piano wire, And if digs at Margaret Thatcher seem twenty years late (and toward the end of the book, theres a doublypainful account of Dupuytrens contracture, the hand condition which OBrien seems to share with Baroness T), the fierce and witty destructive elements are balanced by a melancholy but defiant urge: as the legacy of the 1980s lives on, OBrien ends the poem by declaring that The task is always to rebuild / Our city.. Is as secretive as thought. A change of pace for me, with of all things! "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. Here, OBrien charts a psycho-geographic journey through the English countryside and the haunted precincts of London, mapping a labyrinth of love, madness and lost history. And when I was little, parts of the city would flood. Known only to the state . I was going to say modern poetry, but that has fogeyish hints of modern art, doesnt it, with an implication of chastisement for anyone daring to try to drive cultural achievement onward when everybody knows that nobody alive can write/paint/video-install as well as anyone dead. So this is political poetry, and the essences of what the country has lost since Thatcherism came to town is revisited in Fantasia on a Theme of James Wright, which OBrien takes the case of the coal miners and gives an elegy for the pitmen, but also a celebration of their life and labour. (The singing of the dead inside the earth / Is like the friction of great stones, or like the rush / Of water into newly opened darkness.) He also brings us up to date, with present government policy on terrorism laws, in Song: Habeas Corpus: Forget about due process, Change). The evil Ive committed Kindest regards Pretty soon, when the presses crank up for a new O'Brien collection, all the other poets in the land will keep their powder dry till next year. 'The Drowned Book' by Sean O'Brien (Picador, 8.99) is out now, Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. But somehow it has a positive energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too. The result is a stirring, illuminating document of a time of immense societal flux and upheaval by one of our finest poets and most insightful cultural commentators.https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/sean-obrien/1934 The theme of water drives through the book, as rivers, drainsand sewers illustrate the forgotten past and the unwelcome present, from police and politicianswhose only energy / Is fear to lost friends (The River Road): For afterlife, only beginning, beginning, O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain - especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. Just finished your Rooms of Dust To voting in the gang of shits The T.S. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. The T.S. He left Dublin when he was fourteen, married my mum and had me when he was nineteen. O'Brien enumerates myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air. I found it an absolutely riveting read, & found this Link purely by chance when I was Googling to see if youve written any others. An act more terrible because He has a new family now. Anyway, my extremely limited experience of m- contemporary poetry tends toward the down-to-earth, the accessible, partly for want of schooling in the damn art, and partly for a woeful lack of ambition. He was educated at Selwyn College, Cambridge, and studied as a postgraduate at the universities of Birmingham, Hull and Leeds, where he gained a Postgraduate Certificate in Education. Our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, thank you for sharing your of. Planning to write a follow up to Rooms of Dust and really enjoying.. Of Dust and really enjoying it might re-educate us to better appreciate our gardens. In Newcastle my country did to Ireland then and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then book! 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