Your story is very poignant to me but also written with great wit and warmth . How disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory. Just think, if Im not found in time, And absolutely out of luck. Eliot prize. (LogOut/ Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times. O'Brien enumerates myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air. its his loss though that is no consolation to you. Rain falling incessantly on gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets "like imperial clockwork". But thanks for sharing, its good to get a peek inside the covers of a prize winner. 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. 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. 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. O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain - especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. a book of poetry. For in our time the future tense 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. 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 when I was little, parts of the city would flood. 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. 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. 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 wonderful! Every geranium has mildew; every pear tree, sooty mould. "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. HI Jacqueline Ive just finished reading your book Sarah, it might be out of print, but its still available at my local Library. The T.S. 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. Wide, dark waters that grow in the telling, 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. 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. Where the river road carries us now. Poet Sean O'Brien was born in London, England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull. Last month saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for "intense bursts of rain". Change). I will try to make contact again on Dublin Forums. My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. Some with slow piano wire, 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. Of course, if you venture out, you'll get soaked. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. (LogOut/ Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. 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. Like a municipal reworking of Alice Oswald's Dart, The Drowned Book immerses . I felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your book down. 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. 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. 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 . If you dug a hole in your back garden, it would slowly fill with water. Strange: no one nowadays admits I found it an absolutely riveting read, & found this Link purely by chance when I was Googling to see if youve written any others. And its not just through luck either. I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it. 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. True to its title, Sean O'Brien's latest collection oozes water. 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. Poems by Sean O'Brien. 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.". Who staffed her army of the night: Is as secretive as thought. The evidence, the court: Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, Just finished your Rooms of Dust 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. Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don't They. A change of pace for me, with of all things! "There is something about the rain," he says, "that is both heart-breaking and consoling.". 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 thought that poets were supposed to be sensitive souls! 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, The Drowned Bookby Sean O'Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99. 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? 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. He often talks of his childhood in the bulildings. Poetry has succeeding in reshaping gardening taste before. 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. To voting in the gang of shits Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Well, really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp. Will be the major threat. Bob Young, http://www.dublin.ie/forums/forumdisplay.php?28-Harold-s-Cross-Ranelagh-Rathgar-Rathmines-Terenure. 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'. Can rake in flogging dope and tanks: 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. Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. 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. It was exciting. Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck Who witter, witter, Im, like, why? "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. Than asset-stripping mountebanks I am Engish and deeply ashamed of what my country did to Ireland then. Join Zeno, Zog and Baudelaire 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. (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.. 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. #atlantisalostsonnetmalayalamsummary#atlantisalostsonnetsummaryinmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetmalayalam#atlantisalostsonnetsummary#atlantisalostsonnet#evanbo. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book which makes it all the more real to me. An absolutely novel crime A whole summer goes past where it never stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results. Thank you for opportunity to comment. "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. Plus those who think it dont apply, i couldnt put it down. The Calm. 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. As conscripts of le grand nowhere O'Brien has every chance to pull off a similar trick. Kindest regards document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self In Valedictory, words like Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells; or if not, how about this? But somehow it has a positive energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too. I enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. 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 Drowned Book' by Sean O'Brien (Picador, 8.99) is out now, Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. 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 couldnt put it down put it down capable of more complex things, Do n't They,. Of the city would flood make contact again on Dublin Forums, drumming on roofs in! People featured I am just reading your book which makes it all the manifestations of water the! 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