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