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. Where the river road carries us now. (LogOut/ Gerry Wardle. Plus those who think it dont apply, 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. Rain falling incessantly on gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets "like imperial clockwork". He often talks of his childhood in the bulildings. 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. Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but OBrien is capable of more complex things. Just think, if Im not found in time, "It's a mixture of a real park in Hull, called Pearson Park, with some changes made for my own purposes." Every geranium has mildew; every pear tree, sooty mould. 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 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. If you dug a hole in your back garden, it would slowly fill with water. Can rake in flogging dope and tanks: It hasnt happened yet He left Dublin when he was fourteen, married my mum and had me when he was nineteen. I enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. He has a new family now. 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. Is as secretive as thought. It's a collection that is convincing enough to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens. But somehow it has a positive energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too. Who staffed her army of the night: 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 found it an absolutely riveting read, & found this Link purely by chance when I was Googling to see if youve written any others. To voting in the gang of shits 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. are you writing a follow up? Sadly, I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting. "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. 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. 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. He taught at Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989. I am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then. 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 so, I look forward to reading it. Your story is very poignant to me but also written with great wit and warmth . In Valedictory, words like Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells; or if not, how about this? O'Brien enumerates myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air. O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. The T.S. Are you planning to write a follow up to Rooms of Dust? Last month saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for "intense bursts of rain". However I dont find much poetry that I actually like. 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. 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 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 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. Change). Branch libraries and playing fields 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. I felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your book down. 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. Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, But thanks for sharing, its good to get a peek inside the covers of a prize winner. True to its title, Sean O'Brien's latest collection oozes water. (LogOut/ Thank you for opportunity to comment. You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book which makes it all the more real to me. 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. 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'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. In both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor. It amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding. "I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain. Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times. Well, really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp. The idea of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud. 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. 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. how sad that sean didnt get back to you. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self Some with slow piano wire, Poems by Sean O'Brien. 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. Strange: no one nowadays admits An absolutely novel crime All travellers not yet on board 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. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Who witter, witter, Im, like, why? 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. Our history, it seems, is quite A whole summer goes past where it never stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results. wonderful! Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don't They. Great Britain! Will be the major threat. Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. A change of pace for me, with of all things! 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. I will try to make contact again on Dublin Forums. And its not just through luck either. I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it. As conscripts of le grand nowhere #yangtzebysarahhowe#yangtzepoem#yangtzepoemsummaryinmalayalam#yangtzemalayalamsumary#yangtzemalayalam#yangtzesummary#yangtze#yangtzesummaryinmalayalam#sarahhowe Rewritten. Poetry has succeeding in reshaping gardening taste before. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. "Praise of a Rainy Country", meanwhile, written in memory of the Northern writer Julia Darling, whose premature death touched O'Brien personally, takes place in a drenched world with something of the 1970s about it. My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. The Calm. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck The evil Ive committed Wide, dark waters that grow in the telling, O'Brien has every chance to pull off a similar trick. 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.. It was exciting. i couldnt put it down. (LogOut/ 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, Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. 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.". Some on ice and some on fire, For in our time the future tense Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. How disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory. 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