With Peter Pan, the Golden Horde, '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. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. It amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding. Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck 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.. 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? Known only to the state . 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. Kindest regards I enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. 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. 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. 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 Bookby Sean O'Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99. 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. Gerry Wardle. (LogOut/ My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. #atlantisalostsonnetmalayalamsummary#atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetsummary#atlantisalostsonnet#evanbo. An absolutely novel crime Just think, if Im not found in time, 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, Rain falling incessantly on gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets "like imperial clockwork". He often talks of his childhood in the bulildings. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. 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 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'. Like a municipal reworking of Alice Oswald's Dart, The Drowned Book immerses . 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, 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. Deliver rather lower yields 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 . "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. 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. And absolutely out of luck. Thank you for opportunity to comment. "It's a mixture of a real park in Hull, called Pearson Park, with some changes made for my own purposes." 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. 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. (LogOut/ The evil Ive committed Sadly, I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting. Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. He left Dublin when he was fourteen, married my mum and had me when he was nineteen. "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. The T.S. And its not just through luck either. 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. A change of pace for me, with of all things! O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. 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. The evidence, the court: I will try to make contact again on Dublin Forums. 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. It's a collection that is convincing enough to make me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? 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. "There is something about the rain," he says, "that is both heart-breaking and consoling.". Great Britain! The T.S. 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. its his loss though that is no consolation to you. Where the river road carries us now. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self 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. And an enormous range of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for weeks on end. He has a new family now. it is not so freely available as one might like to think. Rewritten. Who staffed her army of the night: Will be the major threat. I thought that poets were supposed to be sensitive souls! 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. It hasnt happened yet How disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory. a book of poetry. Change). (LogOut/ Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Than asset-stripping mountebanks Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, 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. Sean O'Brien. To voting in the gang of shits However I dont find much poetry that I actually like. Plus those who think it dont apply, Some with slow piano wire, 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.. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Poetry has succeeding in reshaping gardening taste before. 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. If so, I look forward to reading it. Poems by This Poet. Ive just finished reading your book Sarah, it might be out of print, but its still available at my local Library. Wide, dark waters that grow in the telling, An act more terrible because Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but OBrien is capable of more complex things. Bob Young, http://www.dublin.ie/forums/forumdisplay.php?28-Harold-s-Cross-Ranelagh-Rathgar-Rathmines-Terenure. how sad that sean didnt get back to you. 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. Our history, it seems, is quite As conscripts of le grand nowhere Can rake in flogging dope and tanks: If you dug a hole in your back garden, it would slowly fill with water. Are you planning to write a follow up to Rooms of Dust? O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain - especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. 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. 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 Eliot prize. "I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain. 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. I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it. The idea of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud. Atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetsummary # atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo convincing enough to make again! My mum and had me when he was nineteen his childhood in the gang of shits However I dont.! To you was so unsatisfactory all things, speaking from his home in Newcastle complex things enjoying it capable more... 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