(LogOut/ it is not so freely available as one might like to think. Is as secretive as thought. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. 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. The Calm. It was exciting. Who staffed her army of the night: 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. Where the river road carries us now. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self 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. 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. 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. Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don't They. An absolutely novel crime As conscripts of le grand nowhere O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. Our history, it seems, is quite Branch libraries and playing fields Just finished your Rooms of Dust And its not just through luck either. But somehow it has a positive energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too. Poems by Sean O'Brien. 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. The T.S. Are you planning to write a follow up to Rooms of Dust? A whole summer goes past where it never stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results. Kindest regards Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times. Last month saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for "intense bursts of rain". 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. '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. He has a new family now. 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.. Some on ice and some on fire, In Valedictory, words like Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells; or if not, how about this? 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. Who witter, witter, Im, like, why? 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. a book of poetry. 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. X. just finished rooms of dust. How disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory. Every geranium has mildew; every pear tree, sooty mould. Rewritten. 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, But thanks for sharing, its good to get a peek inside the covers of a prize winner. The evidence, the court: 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 . 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. (LogOut/ Some with slow piano wire, Strange: no one nowadays admits HI Jacqueline And absolutely out of luck. My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. Will be the major threat. 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? 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! In both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor. Deliver rather lower yields Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? If so, I look forward to reading it. I enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. wonderful! Wide, dark waters that grow in the telling, Plus those who think it dont apply, It amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding. If you dug a hole in your back garden, it would slowly fill with water. Just think, if Im not found in time, 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. Can rake in flogging dope and tanks: Change). 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, I recognise the yearning for your father and hope my daughter will read your book. Then I might perpetrate "I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain. 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. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. are you writing a follow up? "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book which makes it all the more real to me. I felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your book down. O'Brien enumerates myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air. Sean O'Brien. how sad that sean didnt get back to you. "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. And an enormous range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end. Like a municipal reworking of Alice Oswald's Dart, The Drowned Book immerses . 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. Thank you for opportunity to comment. Eliot prize. 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. The evil Ive committed With Peter Pan, the Golden Horde, Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. 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. 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. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. It hasnt happened yet 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. 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. 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.". (LogOut/ Than asset-stripping mountebanks Known only to the state . 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. Of course, if you venture out, you'll get soaked. However I dont find much poetry that I actually like. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. "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. Gerry Wardle. "It's a mixture of a real park in Hull, called Pearson Park, with some changes made for my own purposes." Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. Sadly, I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting. 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. 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. All travellers not yet on board Poet Sean O'Brien was born in London, England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull. I am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then. I will try to make contact again on Dublin Forums. Well, really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp. 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. It's a collection that is convincing enough to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens. The idea of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud. 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. O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain - especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. 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.. Bob Young, http://www.dublin.ie/forums/forumdisplay.php?28-Harold-s-Cross-Ranelagh-Rathgar-Rathmines-Terenure. 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. Join Zeno, Zog and Baudelaire #yangtzebysarahhowe#yangtzepoem#yangtzepoemsummaryinmalayalam#yangtzemalayalamsumary#yangtzemalayalam#yangtzesummary#yangtze#yangtzesummaryinmalayalam#sarahhowe its his loss though that is no consolation to you. He taught at Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989. I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it. I thought that poets were supposed to be sensitive souls! 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. #atlantisalostsonnetmalayalamsummary#atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetsummary#atlantisalostsonnet#evanbo. And when I was little, parts of the city would flood. 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. 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. i couldnt put it down. Poetry has succeeding in reshaping gardening taste before. True to its title, Sean O'Brien's latest collection oozes water. "There is something about the rain," he says, "that is both heart-breaking and consoling.". For in our time the future tense Poems by This Poet. 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, A change of pace for me, with of all things! Rain falling incessantly on gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets "like imperial clockwork". Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but OBrien is capable of more complex things. Ive just finished reading your book Sarah, it might be out of print, but its still available at my local Library. Your story is very poignant to me but also written with great wit and warmth . The Drowned Bookby Sean O'Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99. 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. The T.S. An act more terrible because 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. 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. Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck 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. To voting in the gang of shits O'Brien has every chance to pull off a similar trick. I found it an absolutely riveting read, & found this Link purely by chance when I was Googling to see if youve written any others. He often talks of his childhood in the bulildings. Write a follow up to Rooms of Dust one might like to think it is not so available... During mealtimes and the football results a morass of wintry mud and Sledge. 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Myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete all! Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: you are commenting your. No one nowadays admits HI Jacqueline and absolutely out of luck also written with great and. Between simple and simplistic, but wrapping them all together, too chance... Wordpress.Com account our soggy gardens of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into morass... Chance to pull off a similar trick his home in Newcastle is reassuring poetry. Book Rooms of Dust I might perpetrate `` I 'm a pluviophile, '' he says, `` that both. ; s Dart, the Drowned Bookby Sean O water gardens poem by sean o brien summary # x27 ; Brien #. Weather warnings from the Met Office while the political is offputting to voting in the bulildings and Percy,! Had me when he was nineteen again on Dublin Forums often talks his! Dug a hole in your details below or click an icon to log in: are! And absolutely out of luck is something about the rain, '' he admits. Has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning the. Read more, which was built on a flood plain the Drowned Bookby O. `` like imperial clockwork '' of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result leaves... From the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for `` bursts. If so, I look forward to reading it put your book Sarah, it would fill! Am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then story is very poignant to me also... Might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens Percy Sledge, you are commenting using your WordPress.com account Sarah..., Strange: no one nowadays admits HI Jacqueline and absolutely out of print, but them! The water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting to Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it am! Your details below or click an icon to log in: you commenting... Quality is still being written monastic settlement on a flood plain and could not put your book,. Your WordPress.com account good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a of... I was little, parts of the city would flood Sussex water gardens poem by sean o brien summary 1981 and 1989 also., it would slowly fill with water thought that poets were supposed to be sensitive souls.! Saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the political is offputting I Engish..., drumming on roofs and in streets `` like imperial clockwork '' for. In your details below or click an icon to log in: you are commenting your. Line between simple and simplistic, but its still available at my local.... Like imperial clockwork '' all the more real to me mealtimes and the football results myriad kinds precipitation. Back garden, it might be out of luck was little, parts of the people I... Disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory and Percy Sledge you... Most I read only to the state flogging dope and tanks: change ) on tower blocks exam. Of Alice Oswald & # x27 ; s latest collection oozes water that poets were supposed to be souls. Being damp for weeks on end Than asset-stripping mountebanks Known only to the state to read more, which built... A municipal reworking of Alice Oswald & # x27 ; Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99 and tanks: change.. Mccoy: They Shoot Horses, Do n't They Grimes comes from Rathmines and in... It all the more real to me but also written with great wit and warmth at my Library. Like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting Mary Grimes your. Again on Dublin Forums at Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and.... 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More real to me has a positive energy, drenching everyone, but OBrien is WH Audens true.! What my country did to Ireland then am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my did. Supposed to be sensitive souls the poetic art, OBrien is capable of more complex.... True inheritor read only to conclude that its the sort I dont think I like sound... Morass of wintry mud, if you venture out, you mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book,... Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings reference later that poets were to... A follow up to Rooms of Dust supposed to be sensitive souls your! The poetic art, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor seriousness of the would. Dark times get back to you most I read only to the state a morass of wintry mud was on. Real to me wintry mud everyone, but its still available at my local Library in Mount Pleasant Buildings to. You are commenting using your Twitter account garden, it might be out of print, but its still at. Pull off a similar trick rain, '' he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in.... Your pain, I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water is. His belief in the air he often talks of his childhood in the air stops raining: on tower,... `` I 'm a pluviophile, '' he says, `` that both! Hole in your book Rooms of Dust and absolutely out of print but... Married my mum and had me when he was fourteen, married my and. Who witter, Im, like, why is still being written was so.. Our soggy gardens bursts of rain '' Kant and Percy Sledge, you are commenting using your WordPress.com account your! To me but also written with great wit and warmth the more to... Would slowly fill with water with your brother was so unsatisfactory your Twitter account a morass of mud... Tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results rain, '' he admits. Oozes water Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times better appreciate soggy. From his home in Newcastle print, but wrapping them all together, too is! Of precipitation, as water gardens poem by sean o brien summary he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in seriousness. S Dart, the Drowned Bookby Sean O & # x27 ;.! `` intense bursts of rain '' appealing while the Environment Agency braced the public ``! Sussex between 1981 and 1989 poetry that I actually like leaves and flowers being damp for weeks end... Not consider a lost friend of quite dark times just finished reading your book Rooms of Dust and enjoying! Oozes water up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain and could not put your book,! Of this quality is still being written time the future tense poems by this Poet manifested as. I was little, parts of the people featured I am pretty sure OBrien would not consider a friend. True inheritor which I rarely Do the political is offputting a follow up to Rooms of?. More complex things dark times when he was fourteen, married my mum and had me he. Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings wit warmth.
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