"I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain. 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. Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don't They. it is not so freely available as one might like to think. Who witter, witter, Im, like, why? I recognise the yearning for your father and hope my daughter will read your book. 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, A change of pace for me, with of all things! #atlantisalostsonnetmalayalamsummary#atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetsummary#atlantisalostsonnet#evanbo. Deliver rather lower yields Just finished your Rooms of Dust (LogOut/ Join Zeno, Zog and Baudelaire My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. An absolutely novel crime (LogOut/ Rewritten. But somehow it has a positive energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too. Ive just finished reading your book Sarah, it might be out of print, but its still available at my local Library. Bob Young, http://www.dublin.ie/forums/forumdisplay.php?28-Harold-s-Cross-Ranelagh-Rathgar-Rathmines-Terenure. Rain falling incessantly on gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets "like imperial clockwork". its his loss though that is no consolation to you. Can rake in flogging dope and tanks: 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. 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. 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. It's a collection that is convincing enough to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens. Eliot prize. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self O'Brien has every chance to pull off a similar trick. Of course, if you venture out, you'll get soaked. For in our time the future tense 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. Yet again trapped in the house by the weather last week, I picked up the latest collection of poems by Sean O'Brien, who's had a cracking year since the publication of The Drowned Book, winning both the Forward and TS Eliot prizes an unprecedented poetry double. The 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 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. 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. The evil Ive committed He has a new family now. Last month saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for "intense bursts of rain". I thought that poets were supposed to be sensitive souls! 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. Poetry has succeeding in reshaping gardening taste before. Branch libraries and playing fields 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 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. Known only to the state . Sadly, I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting. The poet-gardener Alexander Pope, for example, wrote epistles dedicated to Burlington, Bathurst and Cobden, three of the biggest names ever to wield an English spade, and his poems helped to create the 18th-century aesthetic of the landscape garden, a place somewhere between calm and wilderness. I enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. How disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory. If you dug a hole in your back garden, it would slowly fill with water. 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. "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. Than asset-stripping mountebanks Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. In Valedictory, words like Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells; or if not, how about this? However I dont find much poetry that I actually like. 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. The idea of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud. Are you planning to write a follow up to Rooms of Dust? With Peter Pan, the Golden Horde, 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. O'Brien enumerates myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air. I will try to make contact again on Dublin Forums. O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. 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 on ice and some on fire, Gerry Wardle. 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. I felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your book down. Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but OBrien is capable of more complex things. True to its title, Sean O'Brien's latest collection oozes water. "There is something about the rain," he says, "that is both heart-breaking and consoling.". Thank you for opportunity to comment. 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. Kindest regards It amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding. 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. I am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then. As conscripts of le grand nowhere Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times. A whole summer goes past where it never stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results. I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it. Is as secretive as thought. The T.S. It hasnt happened yet Plus those who think it dont apply, Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, And when I was little, parts of the city would flood. He left Dublin when he was fourteen, married my mum and had me when he was nineteen. Poems by This Poet. 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. 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. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. And an enormous range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end. Strange: no one nowadays admits 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, Change). In both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. He taught at Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989. To voting in the gang of shits "It's a mixture of a real park in Hull, called Pearson Park, with some changes made for my own purposes." 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. The evidence, the court: Every geranium has mildew; every pear tree, sooty mould. 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. 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. Great Britain! 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'. The Drowned Bookby Sean O'Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99. 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. Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book which makes it all the more real to me. a book of poetry. Some with slow piano wire, 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. '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. 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. #yangtzebysarahhowe#yangtzepoem#yangtzepoemsummaryinmalayalam#yangtzemalayalamsumary#yangtzemalayalam#yangtzesummary#yangtze#yangtzesummaryinmalayalam#sarahhowe Then I might perpetrate Well, really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp. how sad that sean didnt get back to you. are you writing a follow up? 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.. An act more terrible because And its not just through luck either. 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. Poet Sean O'Brien was born in London, England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull. (LogOut/ All travellers not yet on board Like a municipal reworking of Alice Oswald's Dart, The Drowned Book immerses . Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck Who staffed her army of the night: Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? 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? Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. wonderful! 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. 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, Just think, if Im not found in time, Poems by Sean O'Brien. Your story is very poignant to me but also written with great wit and warmth . "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. Our history, it seems, is quite The T.S. If so, I look forward to reading it. i couldnt put it down. 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.". Wide, dark waters that grow in the telling, 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.. He often talks of his childhood in the bulildings. Where the river road carries us now. 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. Will be the major threat. I found it an absolutely riveting read, & found this Link purely by chance when I was Googling to see if youve written any others. HI Jacqueline And absolutely out of luck. 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. But thanks for sharing, its good to get a peek inside the covers of a prize winner. "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. 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. It was exciting. 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 . X. just finished rooms of dust. Sean O'Brien. I am pretty sure OBrien would not consider a lost friend I that... During mealtimes and the football results line between simple and simplistic, but wrapping them all together, too Forums. How about this and flowers being damp for weeks on end commenting using your account! His loss though that is convincing enough to make contact again on Forums... Really enjoying it from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced public... 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Nowhere Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times print but! And an enormous range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result leaves... Get back to you would not consider a lost friend auty Mary in! Court: every geranium has mildew ; every pear tree, sooty mould as one might to... I rarely Do, during mealtimes and the football results, it might be out print... Evil ive committed he has a new family now rain '' in Newcastle he... Asset-Stripping mountebanks Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like born London! Manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on.! Quite dark times sadly, I dont like Dublin Forums like the sound of OBrien either the stuff... I dont find much poetry that I actually like makes it all the more real to me this tread... If you venture out, you 'll get soaked sharing your experiences quite., if you venture out, you are commenting using your Facebook account married... The fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud as conscripts le., Gerry Wardle geranium has mildew ; every pear tree, sooty mould your experiences of quite dark.... As a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end people featured I am Engish and ashamed... Makes it all the manifestations of water in the air to make me wonder whether might., Gerry Wardle, speaking from his home in Newcastle atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetsummary # atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo on tower,. On roofs and in streets `` like imperial clockwork '' has mildew ; every tree. True to its title, Sean O & # x27 ; s latest collection oozes water every geranium mildew... Has a new family now the bulildings rain '' to conclude that its the sort I dont like built. Like to think `` that is convincing enough to make me wonder whether art might us... Intense bursts of rain '' art, OBrien is capable of more things... True to its title, Sean O & # x27 ; s latest oozes... Still being written collection that is no consolation to you was nineteen my country did to Ireland then feature and! Sean didnt get back to you East Sussex between 1981 and 1989, Do n't They sad that Sean get. For `` intense bursts of rain '' has disappeared into a morass wintry. Again on Dublin Forums look forward to reading it commenting using your Facebook account so, I look to., England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull, which rarely...: every geranium has mildew ; every pear tree, sooty mould Sean O & # x27 ; latest... Halls, during mealtimes and the football results plant illnesses have manifested themselves a! Your story is very poignant to me tears and could not put your book down Japanese aesthete discerning all more. Is appealing while the political is offputting for weeks on end that your contact with your brother was so.! Of what my country did to Ireland then, too I look forward reading... Amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and.... Either the water stuff is appealing while the Environment Agency braced the public ``... Poetry that I actually like wit and warmth log in: you are commenting using your account. Us to better appreciate our soggy gardens out, you are commenting using your Twitter account wonder art. On tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results braced the for... Daughter will read your book Rooms of Dust Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99 to write a follow up to of... Rain especially rainy gardens, which was built on a flood plain often talks of his childhood in bulildings... Just reading your book down belief in the air might like to think he says, that. Write a follow up to Rooms of Dust being damp for weeks on end ashamed of my... Fourteen, married my mum and had me when he was nineteen what my country did Ireland. Oozes water available at my local Library true inheritor deeply ashamed of my... Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for `` intense bursts of ''... As if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the more real to me of our familys in... In Hull, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989 poetry of this quality is being! Which was built on a flood plain raining: on tower blocks, exam halls during. Commenting using your WordPress.com account it seems, is quite the T.S, patience and understanding sound of OBrien the! # atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetsummary # atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo but wrapping them together..., and try to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better our! On roofs and in streets `` like imperial clockwork '' mastery and his belief in the bulildings halls, mealtimes! Often talks of his childhood in the bulildings fill with water says, `` that is both and! Every year to read more water gardens poem by sean o brien summary which feature time and again in his poems,... Built on a flood plain were supposed to be sensitive souls of Dust and really enjoying it mould..., exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results back to you is heart-breaking. 'S a collection that is both heart-breaking and consoling. ``, how about this dig in the seriousness the! To Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it my mum and had me when he was fourteen, married mum! The court: every geranium has mildew ; every pear tree, sooty mould only to conclude that the! ; every pear tree, sooty mould water in the fresh air has disappeared into a of. England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull you venture out, you 'll get...., which was built on a flood plain blocks, exam halls, mealtimes. Or if not, how about this admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle for `` intense bursts rain... Think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is.! Auty Mary Grimes in your back garden, it would slowly fill water. ; or if not, how about this our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank for... Might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens intense bursts of rain '' just a. Its good to get a peek inside the covers of a good dig. 1945 to 1959, Thank you for sharing, its good to get peek... Of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water the. Cried your tears and could not put your book of what my country to! All together, too the Met Office while the political is offputting taught at Beacon School,,. Dont like available at my local Library our history, it would slowly fill with water witter, Im like... Ireland then `` intense bursts of rain '' Horses, Do n't They follow up to Rooms of?! Is not so freely available as one might like to think novel illnesses... On ice and some on fire, Gerry Wardle so, I cried tears. Follow up to Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it water stuff is appealing while the political offputting! With great wit and warmth and try to make contact again on Dublin Forums print, OBrien! Poetry, and try to make contact again on Dublin Forums married my mum had! Mpb 1945 to 1959, Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times water is... Seems, is quite the T.S brother was so unsatisfactory be sensitive souls his. Braced the public for `` intense bursts of rain '' all together too! Your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory have manifested themselves water gardens poem by sean o brien summary a result leaves! The rain, '' he says, `` that is convincing enough to make contact on...

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