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. 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. He often talks of his childhood in the bulildings. 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. #yangtzebysarahhowe#yangtzepoem#yangtzepoemsummaryinmalayalam#yangtzemalayalamsumary#yangtzemalayalam#yangtzesummary#yangtze#yangtzesummaryinmalayalam#sarahhowe Deliver rather lower yields I am just reading your book Rooms of Dust and really enjoying it. The T.S. Can rake in flogging dope and tanks: 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." 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, 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. Branch libraries and playing fields "There is something about the rain," he says, "that is both heart-breaking and consoling.". If you dug a hole in your back garden, it would slowly fill with water. I found it an absolutely riveting read, & found this Link purely by chance when I was Googling to see if youve written any others. 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.. "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. Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck An act more terrible because Who witter, witter, Im, like, why? The Drowned Bookby Sean O'Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99. 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. Where the river road carries us now. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. The Calm. (LogOut/ If so, I look forward to reading it. Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. X. just finished rooms of dust. The evidence, the court: 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. And absolutely out of luck. Then I might perpetrate Is as secretive as thought. He left Dublin when he was fourteen, married my mum and had me when he was nineteen. But somehow it has a positive energy, drenching everyone, but wrapping them all together, too. The idea of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud. Just think, if Im not found in time, 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 . Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, Gerry Wardle. Some with slow piano wire, Last month saw severe weather warnings from the Met Office while the Environment Agency braced the public for "intense bursts of rain". i couldnt put it down. Kindest regards (LogOut/ HI Jacqueline 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. Than asset-stripping mountebanks Thank you for opportunity to comment. Great Britain! a book of poetry. It was exciting. Rain falling incessantly on gardens, drumming on roofs and in streets "like imperial clockwork". document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self 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. '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. Ive just finished reading your book Sarah, it might be out of print, but its still available at my local Library. 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. I felt your pain, I cried your tears and could not put your book down. Every geranium has mildew; every pear tree, sooty mould. 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. Join Zeno, Zog and Baudelaire "I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain. I will try to make contact again on Dublin Forums. Eliot prize. 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. Sean O'Brien. its his loss though that is no consolation to you. Well, really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp. The evil Ive committed "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. 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. 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. You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book which makes it all the more real to me. Poet Sean O'Brien was born in London, England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull. Thank you for sharing your experiences of quite dark times. 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. Rewritten. However I dont find much poetry that I actually like. A change of pace for me, with of all things! 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. 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. 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'. 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. Poems by This Poet. Of course, if you venture out, you'll get soaked. O'Brien enumerates myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air. He has a new family now. 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.. wonderful! Will be the major threat. My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. An absolutely novel crime 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. Your story is very poignant to me but also written with great wit and warmth . I enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. In both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, OBrien is WH Audens true inheritor. 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 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. It hasnt happened yet Some on ice and some on fire, A whole summer goes past where it never stops raining: on tower blocks, exam halls, during mealtimes and the football results. The T.S. 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. how sad that sean didnt get back to you. Plus those who think it dont apply, are you writing a follow up? Known only to the state . 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.