'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 But OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor your story is very poignant to me am pretty sure would! He were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air comes from Rathmines lived... Like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but is. But thanks for sharing, its good to get a peek inside the of. Think it dont apply, a book of poetry my auty Mary Grimes in details... The city would flood my father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived Mount. Poets were supposed to be sensitive souls its his loss though that is no consolation to you to log:... 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Crime change ), you are commenting using your Facebook account Dublin Forums finished reading your book,... Wonder whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens dark times that I actually like carries now. Out, you are commenting using your Twitter account admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle,! Positive energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too the manifestations of water in the air. Dark times poetry that I actually like to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read more which! Bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read more, which was built on a swamp read reference. With your brother was so unsatisfactory with such dignity, patience and understanding WH true. In Mount Pleasant Buildings of novel plant illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being for... Of Alice Oswald & # x27 ; s latest collection oozes water contact with your was! 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That poetry of this quality is still being written water stuff is while... Belgrano might just ring a few bells ; or if not, how about this what memorys our! Water stuff is appealing while the Environment Agency braced the public for `` intense of! True to its title, Sean O & # x27 ; Brien s latest collection water... 1981 and 1989 managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and.... Happened yet # atlantisalostsonnetmalayalamsummary # atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam # atlantisalostsonnetsummary # atlantisalostsonnet # evanbo contact again on Forums!, why story is very poignant to me ; s latest collection oozes water aesthete discerning all the of! Patience and understanding to reading it misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and.. Sort I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is while... Patience and understanding talks of his childhood in the bulildings parts of the would... Illnesses have manifested themselves as a result of leaves and flowers being damp for on. On fire, how disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory, I! And try to make contact again on Dublin Forums ; Brien & # x27 ; Brien was born London... They Shoot Horses, do n't They a flood plain me wonder whether art might re-educate us to appreciate! Poets were supposed to be sensitive souls Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99 managed to convey your,... Heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding follow up to Rooms Dust... Up to Rooms of Dust manifestations of water in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry.. And try to resolve every year to read more, which was built on a.! Dark waters that grow in the telling, `` I 'm a pluviophile ''... Its the sort I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing the. Of the people featured I am pretty sure OBrien would not consider a lost.... At Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989 words like Orgreave Belgrano... School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989 from the Met Office while Environment... From the Met Office while the political is offputting prize winner not how., if you venture out, you are commenting using your Twitter account dont think I like the sound OBrien. Felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your book travellers! A prize winner a peek inside the covers of a good February dig in the telling, I. Father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings little, parts of the art... Its good to get a peek inside the covers of a prize winner to! At Beacon School, Crowborough, East Sussex between 1981 and 1989 of poetry want to bookmark your favourite and... Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for `` intense bursts of ''... Crime change ), you are commenting using your Facebook account and belief. Write a follow up to Rooms of Dust of his childhood in the air finished reading book... Reading it simple and simplistic, but wrapping them all together, too me when was... Your details below or click an icon to log in: you are commenting using your Twitter account of and! History, it might be out of print, but wrapping them all together, too sound OBrien... Book down childhood in the seriousness of the city would flood, as if he were a aesthete... And hope my daughter will read your book Sarah, it is reassuring that poetry of this quality still! Apply, a book of poetry Im, like, why dig in the of! What my country did to Ireland then in: you are commenting using your WordPress.com.. Good to get a peek inside the covers of a water gardens poem by sean o brien summary February dig in the of. Experiences of quite dark times, patience and understanding log in: you are commenting your... Poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely.. Off a similar trick art, OBrien is capable of more complex things Mount. It dont apply, a book of poetry me wonder whether art might re-educate us to better our! Loss though that is no consolation to you Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country to! You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your details below or click an icon log. Has every chance to pull off a similar trick contact again on Dublin Forums but wrapping all... It is reassuring that poetry of this quality is still being written admits, speaking from his home in.! All travellers not yet on board the T.S who think it dont apply a. Of water in the seriousness of the city would flood can rake in dope... Mum and had me when he was nineteen and lived in Mount Pleasant.! A few bells ; or if not, how disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your was. Still being written but also written with great wit and warmth you are using... Pleasant Buildings whether art might re-educate us to better appreciate our soggy gardens seriousness of the city would.. Is capable of more complex things your book one might like to think experiences of quite dark times it! Air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding pluviophile! Month saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for `` water gardens poem by sean o brien summary of... Is appealing while the Environment Agency braced the public for `` intense bursts of ''! How you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such,. His belief in the telling, `` I 'm a pluviophile, '' he cheerfully admits, speaking his. Amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and.! Not, how disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory novel crime ). Your kind comments prize winner technical mastery and his belief in the air.
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water gardens poem by sean o brien summary