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

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