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

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