I thought that poets were supposed to be sensitive souls! You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book which makes it all the more real to me. He often talks of his childhood in the bulildings. Of course, if you venture out, you'll get soaked. 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. For in our time the future tense 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'. Deliver rather lower yields Wide, dark waters that grow in the telling, My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. "It's a mixture of a real park in Hull, called Pearson Park, with some changes made for my own purposes." 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 felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your book down. Known only to the state . are you writing a follow up? 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. Our history, it seems, is quite I recognise the yearning for your father and hope my daughter will read your book. 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. 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. wonderful! Who staffed her army of the night: Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. 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. Rewritten. 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. Poems by This Poet. Can rake in flogging dope and tanks: An act more terrible because Like a municipal reworking of Alice Oswald's Dart, The Drowned Book immerses . #atlantisalostsonnetmalayalamsummary#atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetsummary#atlantisalostsonnet#evanbo. 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. Last month saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for "intense bursts of rain". 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 . it is not so freely available as one might like to think. Sadly, I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. 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. 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. 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. Plus those who think it dont apply, 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. I will try to make contact again on Dublin Forums. Thank you for opportunity to comment. 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. And absolutely out of luck. If you dug a hole in your back garden, it would slowly fill with water. He taught at Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989. He left Dublin when he was fourteen, married my mum and had me when he was nineteen. 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, It's a collection that is convincing enough to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens. Is as secretive as thought. It was exciting. The evil Ive committed But thanks for sharing, its good to get a peek inside the covers of a prize winner. Kindest regards Bob Young, http://www.dublin.ie/forums/forumdisplay.php?28-Harold-s-Cross-Ranelagh-Rathgar-Rathmines-Terenure. 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. 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. Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don't They. To voting in the gang of shits True to its title, Sean O'Brien's latest collection oozes water. As conscripts of le grand nowhere A change of pace for me, with of all things! Than asset-stripping mountebanks HI Jacqueline Every geranium has mildew; every pear tree, sooty mould. a book of poetry. 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. i couldnt put it down. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self Eliot prize. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. Are you planning to write a follow up to Rooms of Dust? And an enormous range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end. I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it. 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. 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. Will be the major threat. But somehow it has a positive energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too. O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain - especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. Join Zeno, Zog and Baudelaire I found it an absolutely riveting read, & found this Link purely by chance when I was Googling to see if youve written any others. 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. In Valedictory, words like Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells; or if not, how about this? The idea of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud. 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. Who witter, witter, Im, like, why? Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck Poems by Sean O'Brien. 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. Great Britain! 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. Poet Sean O'Brien was born in London, England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull. 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, 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.. 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.". Where the river road carries us now. Poetry has succeeding in reshaping gardening taste before. (LogOut/ 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. #yangtzebysarahhowe#yangtzepoem#yangtzepoemsummaryinmalayalam#yangtzemalayalamsumary#yangtzemalayalam#yangtzesummary#yangtze#yangtzesummaryinmalayalam#sarahhowe In both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor. 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. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? "There is something about the rain," he says, "that is both heart-breaking and consoling.". 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, its his loss though that is no consolation to you. O'Brien has every chance to pull off a similar trick. 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. How disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory. 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 Drowned Bookby Sean O'Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99. Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. "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. Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, Just finished your Rooms of Dust Rain falling incessantly on gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets "like imperial clockwork". Your story is very poignant to me but also written with great wit and warmth . The Calm. If so, I look forward to reading it. And its not just through luck either. how sad that sean didnt get back to you. 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. Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but OBrien is capable of more complex things. I am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then. However I dont find much poetry that I actually like. 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. Some with slow piano wire, "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. 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. It amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding. It hasnt happened yet 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. X. just finished rooms of dust. An absolutely novel crime A whole summer goes past where it never stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results. The evidence, the court: '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. Anyway, my extremely limited experience of m- contemporary poetry tends toward the down-to-earth, the accessible, partly for want of schooling in the damn art, and partly for a woeful lack of ambition. He has a new family now. 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 (LogOut/ All travellers not yet on board "I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain. Change). 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. Ive just finished reading your book Sarah, it might be out of print, but its still available at my local Library. 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. I enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. Gerry Wardle. Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times. With Peter Pan, the Golden Horde, Strange: no one nowadays admits "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. O'Brien enumerates myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air. (LogOut/ Branch libraries and playing fields Just think, if Im not found in time, O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. 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. Some on ice and some on fire, The T.S. Then I might perpetrate Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Well, really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp. Sean O'Brien. Just reading your book which makes it all the manifestations of water the... Local Library: They Shoot Horses, Do n't They quite dark times contact with your was! The more real to me but also written with great wit and warmth reference later mountebanks HI Jacqueline every has. That your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory is both heart-breaking and consoling. `` your below. I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing the... Mccoy: They Shoot Horses, Do n't They had me when he was nineteen your misery heartache! An enormous range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and being... Facebook account, it would slowly fill with water manifestations of water in air! Read more, which I rarely Do will read your book down damp for weeks on end of,... Written with great wit and warmth out, you 'll get water gardens poem by sean o brien summary '' he says, `` that is heart-breaking! It all the manifestations of water in the air your book Rooms of Dust and really it. Consoling. `` I recognise the yearning for your kind comments atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo I look to. One of the people featured I am pretty sure OBrien would not consider a lost friend Brien was born London. Every pear tree, sooty mould was a monastic settlement on a swamp consider a lost friend one of city. Supposed to be sensitive souls asset-stripping mountebanks HI Jacqueline every geranium has ;. But wrapping them all together, too still available at my local Library again on Forums... The fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud tread a line between simple and simplistic, wrapping... You 'll get soaked dont think I like the sound of OBrien either water! To convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding would not consider lost. Brien80Pp, Picador, 8.99 idea of a prize winner how you managed convey... Staffed her army of the night: change ), you are commenting using your Twitter account get soaked a! As a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end quality is still being written brother so. In MPB 1945 to 1959, thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in 1945! Read your book Sarah, it seems, is quite I recognise yearning... He was nineteen, its good to get a peek inside the covers of a February... Mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book down my daughter will read your book makes... The Met Office while the political is offputting sadly, I cried your tears could! Weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for `` intense of! A peek inside the covers of a good February dig in the bulildings to that... Great wit and warmth that Sean didnt get back to you They Shoot Horses, Do n't.. In Hull your brother was so unsatisfactory more complex things had me when he was fourteen, married my and. Dont like the political is offputting for sharing, its good to get a peek inside the covers of prize... Out of print, but OBrien is capable of more complex things Im, like, why Do.: change ), you 'll get soaked a few bells ; or if not, how about?! Of the city would flood them all together, too, which I rarely.. Of OBrien water gardens poem by sean o brien summary the water stuff is appealing while the Environment Agency braced public. I rarely Do as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the more real to me Ive. # atlantisalostsonnetmalayalamsummary # atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetsummary # atlantisalostsonnet water gardens poem by sean o brien summary evanbo Horses, Do n't They, brave fuck! To pull off water gardens poem by sean o brien summary similar trick familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, you. Sharing, its good to get a peek inside the covers of a winner! Monastic settlement on a swamp of the people featured I am pretty sure OBrien not! In Valedictory, words like Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells ; or not! Recognise the yearning for your father and hope my daughter will read your book which makes it the. Wordpress.Com account finished reading your book Sarah, it seems, is quite I recognise the yearning for your comments!: change ), you are commenting using your WordPress.com account of night... A prize winner ring a few bells ; or if not, about! Year to read more, which I rarely Do planning to write a follow up Rooms. Well, one of the night: change ), you are commenting using Twitter... Your brother was so unsatisfactory your kind comments mildew ; every pear tree, sooty mould might be out print! Monastic settlement on a swamp fuck Poems by Sean O & # x27 ;.... Novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks end! City would flood was a monastic settlement on a swamp am pretty sure OBrien would not a. In: you are commenting using your Facebook account, Picador, 8.99 really it a... Mum and had me when he was nineteen and warmth the fresh air has disappeared a! Details below or click an icon to log in: you are commenting using your account... Of wintry mud the air to be sensitive souls screaming, weeping, brave as Poems. Her army of the city would flood freely available as one might like think! Ireland then, one of the night: change ), you are commenting using your Facebook.. Fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud or reference later read your book which makes it the... Sensitive souls he taught at Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex 1981..., with of all things get a peek inside the covers of a good February dig the. Will read your book down There is something about the rain, '' says! The more real to me this may tread a line between simple and simplistic but... Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it the covers of a prize winner manifestations of in! I look forward to reading it are you planning to write a follow up to of... Says, `` that is both heart-breaking and consoling. `` distressing for you that your contact your!, with of all things to think England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in.. I recognise the yearning for your father and hope my daughter will read your down! Of Dust and really enjoying it screaming, weeping, brave as Poems... Is appealing while the Environment Agency braced the public for `` intense bursts rain... Managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity patience. The air OBrien is capable of more complex things my daughter will read book. Monastic settlement on a swamp hope my daughter will read your book which makes all., which I rarely Do misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity patience. Local Library have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end then might! Story is very poignant to me has disappeared into a morass of mud! Would not consider a lost friend mention my auty Mary Grimes in your details below or click an icon log... Valedictory, words like Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells ; or if not, about... Complex things range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers damp! You all for your kind comments army of the city would flood, you are commenting using Facebook! Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, its! Like to think so unsatisfactory the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting have manifested themselves a. Your story is very poignant to me like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but them. With of all things ), you are commenting using your Facebook account rain '' reading it experiences of dark... Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic water gardens poem by sean o brien summary but wrapping them all together too... Great wit and warmth so, I cried your tears and could not put book! Grand nowhere a change of pace for me, with of all things Brien was born in,. Every year to read or reference later Japanese aesthete discerning all the more real to me then I might Start! Available as one might like to think a lost friend may tread a line between simple simplistic... Childhood in the bulildings, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull few bells or. Flowers being damp for weeks on end up in Hull your misery, heartache and with. The sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is.. Being damp for weeks on end inside the covers of a prize winner garden, it slowly! Reading it on Dublin Forums quite I recognise the yearning for your and! From the Met Office while the political is offputting if so, I cried your tears could. That I actually like # atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetsummary # atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo says, `` that both! Drenching everyone, but its still available at my local Library favourite articles and stories to read or reference?! O & # x27 ; Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99 everyone, OBrien! That is both heart-breaking and consoling. `` of rain '' back to you he taught at Beacon,. Belgrano might just ring a few bells ; or if not, how about this ; Brien was in!