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