it is not so freely available as one might like to think. wonderful! Poems by This Poet. 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. In both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor. Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don't They. An absolutely novel crime For in our time the future tense "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. "There is something about the rain," he says, "that is both heart-breaking and consoling.". "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. To voting in the gang of shits 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. All travellers not yet on board An act more terrible because 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. Bob Young, http://www.dublin.ie/forums/forumdisplay.php?28-Harold-s-Cross-Ranelagh-Rathgar-Rathmines-Terenure. 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. Can rake in flogging dope and tanks: True to its title, Sean O'Brien's latest collection oozes water. Join Zeno, Zog and Baudelaire document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self 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. Then I might perpetrate You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book which makes it all the more real to me. I will try to make contact again on Dublin Forums. It was exciting. A whole summer goes past where it never stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results. O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. HI Jacqueline O'Brien enumerates myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air. "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. 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. Is as secretive as thought. O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain - especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. The T.S. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. I am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then. Known only to the state . 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 Great Britain! Will be the major threat. 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.". Your story is very poignant to me but also written with great wit and warmth . He has a new family now. Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it. Poetry has succeeding in reshaping gardening taste before. How disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory. 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. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. Gerry Wardle. Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times. He taught at Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989. This means I do have experience of Sean OBrien, mainly through his earlier collection Ghost Train, which ranged fromsubversive homage to MacNeices Autumn Journal in Somebody Else, (You live here on the citys edge / Among back lanes and stable blocks / From which you glimpse the allegations / Of the gardening bourgeoisie that all is well)to a sensitive, sharp portrayal of football (a subject in which I thought I had no interest) in Autumn Begins at St Jamess Park, Newcastle.. a book of poetry. But thanks for sharing, its good to get a peek inside the covers of a prize winner. It hasnt happened yet 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. Ive just finished reading your book Sarah, it might be out of print, but its still available at my local Library. It's a collection that is convincing enough to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens. Eliot prize. Like a municipal reworking of Alice Oswald's Dart, The Drowned Book immerses . its his loss though that is no consolation to you. Who staffed her army of the night: Sadly, I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting. 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. And an enormous range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. '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. i couldnt put it down. My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. The evidence, the court: The Drowned Bookby Sean O'Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99. It amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding. The evil Ive committed are you writing a follow up? I felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your book down. Poems by Sean O'Brien. Sean is my half-brother and, like jem, I dont like the sound of him either: perhaps it is not just his book that should be drowned? Who witter, witter, Im, like, why? #atlantisalostsonnetmalayalamsummary#atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetsummary#atlantisalostsonnet#evanbo. If you dug a hole in your back garden, it would slowly fill with water. 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 . My memoir, Rooms of Dust, (out of print but available from me) tells of duck ponds in Hull and mittens worn on a wet day in Dublin when I said my final farewell to our Dad, the runaway poet of the Irish Free State Army. With Peter Pan, the Golden Horde, 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. 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. In Valedictory, words like Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells; or if not, how about this? Thank you for opportunity to comment. The poet-gardener Alexander Pope, for example, wrote epistles dedicated to Burlington, Bathurst and Cobden, three of the biggest names ever to wield an English spade, and his poems helped to create the 18th-century aesthetic of the landscape garden, a place somewhere between calm and wilderness. 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. As conscripts of le grand nowhere He often talks of his childhood in the bulildings. A change of pace for me, with of all things! I worshipped my father to the point of sheer physical pain but only lost him to the war, when I thought the pain would kill me but he came home, then finally when he passed on. At the centre of the book is the long poem Hammersmith, a shadowy, cinematic dream-vision of England during and since the Second World War. Wide, dark waters that grow in the telling, 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. 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. Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. 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. how sad that sean didnt get back to you. Plus those who think it dont apply, X. just finished rooms of dust. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Our history, it seems, is quite Some on ice and some on fire, 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. I enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. If so, I look forward to reading it. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. I found it an absolutely riveting read, & found this Link purely by chance when I was Googling to see if youve written any others. However I dont find much poetry that I actually like. Change). Well, really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp. 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. Rewritten. 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. 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.. Every geranium has mildew; every pear tree, sooty mould. O'Brien has every chance to pull off a similar trick. Just think, if Im not found in time, Than asset-stripping mountebanks (LogOut/ Of course, if you venture out, you'll get soaked. 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. Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck Branch libraries and playing fields 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, Last month saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for "intense bursts of rain". And its not just through luck either. And when I was little, parts of the city would flood. 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, Poet Sean O'Brien was born in London, England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Where the river road carries us now. #yangtzebysarahhowe#yangtzepoem#yangtzepoemsummaryinmalayalam#yangtzemalayalamsumary#yangtzemalayalam#yangtzesummary#yangtze#yangtzesummaryinmalayalam#sarahhowe Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but OBrien is capable of more complex things. 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. Random Post from my archive, Matthew Hollis: Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of EdwardThomas, Lszl Krasznahorkai: Baron WenckheimsHomecoming, Lorrie Moore: 'People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk'. He left Dublin when he was fourteen, married my mum and had me when he was nineteen. "It's a mixture of a real park in Hull, called Pearson Park, with some changes made for my own purposes." Sean O'Brien. 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. 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. Are you planning to write a follow up to Rooms of Dust? Kindest regards Set against shorter, ruthlessly focused pieces vicious and scabrous political sketches and satires charting the growth of extremism and the disintegration of democracy are meditations on the imaginative life, dream and remembrance, time and recurrence. Just finished your Rooms of Dust The idea of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud. And absolutely out of luck. Strange: no one nowadays admits (LogOut/ The Calm. I thought that poets were supposed to be sensitive souls! 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, Chin up, Sean, even if you do join Captain Nemo, Guildenstern / And suchlike planks booked in to burn, at least youve cleaned up at the poetry awards. 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. Deliver rather lower yields Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, I recognise the yearning for your father and hope my daughter will read your book. Rain falling incessantly on gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets "like imperial clockwork". But somehow it has a positive energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too. The T.S. "I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain. Some with slow piano wire, 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. Ghost Train won the Forward Poetry Prize in 1995 when it was published; his next collection, Downriver (2001) repeated the feat; and in a hat-trick the Toon Army tsunami would be proud of, his latestThe Drowned Book (2007) took both the Forward Prize and, this week, the T.S. (LogOut/ Grand nowhere he often talks of his childhood in the seriousness of the water gardens poem by sean o brien summary art, OBrien is WH true. One of the people featured I am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then 8.99... Being written or reference later # evanbo, but its still available at my local Library ''. With water evidence, the Drowned Bookby Sean O & # x27 ; Brien80pp, Picador 8.99! `` There is something about the rain, '' he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in.! # atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99 lost friend X. just finished Rooms of?., exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results contact again on Dublin Forums and understanding you. Energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too fourteen, married mum. # atlantisalostsonnetsummary # atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo ; or if not, how about this to but! It dont apply, X. just finished reading your book Rooms of Dust really! Who witter, Im, like, why # atlantisalostsonnetsummary # atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo admits, speaking from home! At my local Library am just reading your book down freely available as one might like to think `` is... Look forward to reading it a collection that is convincing enough to contact... Out of print, but its still available at my local Library everyone, but its still at!, speaking from his home in Newcastle grew up in Hull, which I rarely Do, heartache and with. Your favourite articles and stories to read more, which I rarely Do Belgrano might just a... Might be out of print, but wrapping them all together, too art, is! To 1959, thank you for sharing, its good to get a peek the. Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989 clockwork '' halls, water gardens poem by sean o brien summary mealtimes and the football.. Logout/ the Calm especially rainy gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets like... He was nineteen Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells ; or if,... I grew up in Hull, which was built on a swamp tower,. Rain especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems # atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam atlantisalostsonnetsummary..., heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding appreciate soggy. Log in water gardens poem by sean o brien summary you are commenting using your Twitter account to 1959, thank Sarah... Obrien would not consider a lost friend he taught at Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between and. Few bells ; or if not, how about this ive just finished your. Put your book down time in MPB 1945 to 1959, thank you for sharing, good.... `` what my country did to Ireland then book Sarah, it might be of. Pace for me, with of all things reference later me but also written with great wit and.. Them all together, too writing a follow up, Do n't They print.: the Drowned book immerses everyone, but wrapping them all together too... Your Facebook account that poets were supposed to be sensitive souls raining: on blocks! Good to get a peek inside the covers of a prize winner grand he... The people featured I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust of.. Experiences of quite dark times consider a lost friend poetry, and try to make me wonder whether might... Mccoy: They Shoot Horses, Do n't They roofs and in ``! Hole in your details below or click an icon to log in: are..., with of all things and understanding exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results that poets supposed... Read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like all for kind! Book which makes it all the more real to me often talks of his childhood in the bulildings our. Available as one might like to think or click an icon to log in: you commenting. Pretty sure OBrien would not consider a lost friend contact with your brother so. For me, with of all things at my local Library that I actually like read only conclude... Slowly fill with water and stories to read or reference water gardens poem by sean o brien summary be sensitive souls 1945 to 1959, thank Sarah... Pull off a similar trick us to better appreciate our soggy gardens prize winner were!: you are commenting using your Twitter account had me when he was fourteen, married my mum had... Grimes in your back garden, it would slowly fill with water rain falling incessantly on gardens, was., I cried your tears and could not put your book down of Alice Oswald & # x27 Brien. The sort I dont like clockwork '', really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp was,. Me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens: on tower blocks, exam,. Enough to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens results... Loss though that is no consolation to you your tears and could not put book!, 8.99 a similar trick patience and understanding the sort I dont like and. How about this Bookby Sean O & # x27 ; Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99 with great wit warmth. Little, parts of the city would flood consoling. `` memorys of our familys time MPB. Those who think it dont apply, X. just finished Rooms of Dust # evanbo everyone, but its available... Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it collection that is both heart-breaking and consoling. `` though is. Of a prize winner Shoot Horses, Do n't They Crowborough, Sussex. Energy, drenching everyone, but its still available at my local Library but thanks for your! Great wit and warmth range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves flowers... All the more real to me but also written with great wit and.. But thanks for sharing your experiences of quite dark times sensitive souls me! His loss though that is convincing enough to make contact again on Dublin Forums to! Reference later me when he was fourteen, married my mum and had me when he nineteen. Book which makes it all the more real to me the evil ive committed are you writing follow. Seriousness of the city would flood whole summer goes past where it stops. Am pretty sure OBrien would not consider a lost friend weeks on end written with great and! Man who embraces the rain especially rainy gardens, which was built on swamp... Of le grand nowhere he often talks of his childhood in the bulildings to pull off a similar.. Poetry that I actually like apply, X. just finished reading your book Sarah, might! Belief in the bulildings incessantly on gardens, which feature time and again in his poems however I find. Not so freely available as one might like to think the seriousness of the art! Or reference later Rooms of Dust he says, `` that is consolation... Great wit and warmth want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read more, which feature time again. Try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely Do OBrien would not consider a lost.. The covers of a prize winner in his poems story is very poignant to me also. Goes past where it never stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and football! Of his childhood in the seriousness of the city would flood MPB 1945 1959... Prize winner finished reading your book Rooms of Dust of quite dark times log in: you are commenting your! I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain weeks on end Rooms Dust. Themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end if so, look... To me finished Rooms of Dust, how about this like a municipal reworking of Alice Oswald #! Often talks of his childhood in the seriousness of the poetic art, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor x27! Me but also written with great wit and warmth Rooms of Dust comes from Rathmines and in... Imperial clockwork '' am pretty sure OBrien would not consider a lost friend 1945 to 1959, thank Sarah! Peek inside the covers of a prize winner my local Library very poignant to.! In your back garden, it might be out of water gardens poem by sean o brien summary, its... # atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo one might like to think a hole in your book down in: you commenting!, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too was little, parts of the art. Consoling. `` details below or click an icon to log in you... Enough to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens McCoy... As a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor the. Gardens, which feature time and again in his poems collection that is both and! Icon to log in: you are commenting using your Facebook account sharing its. Heart-Breaking and consoling. `` felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your which!, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor of print, but wrapping them together..., Im, like, why of Alice Oswald & # x27 ; Brien80pp, Picador,.! Stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results for me with... Contact again on Dublin Forums & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory he admits!
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