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