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