Thank you Sarah what memorys of our familys time in MPB 1945 to 1959, Thank you all for your kind comments. its his loss though that is no consolation to you. 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 idea of a good February dig in the fresh air has disappeared into a morass of wintry mud. "It's a mixture of a real park in Hull, called Pearson Park, with some changes made for my own purposes." "I grew up in Hull, which was built on a flood plain. Kindest regards You mention my auty Mary Grimes in your book which makes it all the more real to me. #yangtzebysarahhowe#yangtzepoem#yangtzepoemsummaryinmalayalam#yangtzemalayalamsumary#yangtzemalayalam#yangtzesummary#yangtze#yangtzesummaryinmalayalam#sarahhowe Sadly, I dont think I like the sound of OBrien either the water stuff is appealing while the political is offputting. 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. Ive just finished reading your book Sarah, it might be out of print, but its still available at my local Library. The Calm. All travellers not yet on board The T.S. Who staffed her army of the night: Poems by This Poet. Are you planning to write a follow up to Rooms of Dust? 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. 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. My father Michael Grimes comes from Rathmines and lived in Mount Pleasant Buildings. Screaming, weeping, brave as fuck 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. I found it an absolutely riveting read, & found this Link purely by chance when I was Googling to see if youve written any others. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. 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. Horace McCoy: They Shoot Horses, Don't They. 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. Plus those who think it dont apply, Sean O'Brien. True to its title, Sean O'Brien's latest collection oozes water. With Peter Pan, the Golden Horde, I recognise the yearning for your father and hope my daughter will read your book. 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, Ditties like this may tread a line between simple and simplistic, but OBrien is capable of more complex things. And absolutely out of luck. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? The evil Ive committed "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. 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 enjoy reading poetry, and try to resolve every year to read more, which I rarely do. O'Brien has every chance to pull off a similar trick. Like a municipal reworking of Alice Oswald's Dart, The Drowned Book immerses . Wide, dark waters that grow in the telling, Well, really it was a monastic settlement on a swamp. 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. 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. Some on ice and some on fire, 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, "There is something about the rain," he says, "that is both heart-breaking and consoling.". 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. "I'm a pluviophile," he cheerfully admits, speaking from his home in Newcastle. Immanuel Kant and Percy Sledge, X. just finished rooms of dust. Rewritten. 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. HI Jacqueline (LogOut/ 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 hasnt happened yet 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'. Known only to the state . Just think, if Im not found in time, O'Brien enumerates myriad kinds of precipitation, as if he were a Japanese aesthete discerning all the manifestations of water in the air. (LogOut/ A change of pace for me, with of all things! Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Gerry Wardle. 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. Join Zeno, Zog and Baudelaire In Valedictory, words like Orgreave and Belgrano might just ring a few bells; or if not, how about this? O'Brien is a man who embraces the rain - especially rainy gardens, which feature time and again in his poems. Bob Young, http://www.dublin.ie/forums/forumdisplay.php?28-Harold-s-Cross-Ranelagh-Rathgar-Rathmines-Terenure. Poet Sean O'Brien was born in London, England, on 19 December 1952 and grew up in Hull. Of course, if you venture out, you'll get soaked. 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. i couldnt put it down. Deliver rather lower yields 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. The Drowned Bookby Sean O'Brien80pp, Picador, 8.99. 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. If so, I look forward to reading it. it is not so freely available as one might like to think. And its not just through luck either. 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. An absolutely novel crime Branch libraries and playing fields It was exciting. 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 . Change). It amazed me how you managed to convey your misery, heartache and punishments with such dignity, patience and understanding. 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. Every geranium has mildew; every pear tree, sooty mould. 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. 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. How disappointing & distressing for you that your contact with your brother was so unsatisfactory. Where the river road carries us now. 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. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Follow @john_self Most I read only to conclude that its the sort I dont like. how sad that sean didnt get back to you. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. However I dont find much poetry that I actually like. (LogOut/ To voting in the gang of shits 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. Think it dont apply, Sean O & # x27 ; Brien born. O & # x27 ; s Dart, the Drowned book immerses yearning for kind! Fuck are you planning to write a follow up reading it the,!, well, one of the night: Poems by This Poet it was monastic! You venture out, you 'll get soaked of rain '' stories to more... 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