The Drowned Book by Sean O'Brien
The Drowned Book by Sean O'Brien won the T S Eliot Prize 2007. you can read extracts from it here:
[link]
anybody have any thoughts? according to Picador's blurb, he's one of the most important English poets of the last fifty years. he's certainly very proficient technically, but does he have anything to say? or do a weighty tone and learned references hide a paucity of genuine feeling and new thought?
[link]
anybody have any thoughts? according to Picador's blurb, he's one of the most important English poets of the last fifty years. he's certainly very proficient technically, but does he have anything to say? or do a weighty tone and learned references hide a paucity of genuine feeling and new thought?
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Also, glass eye/gothic window is interesting, even with the underlying cliche. "King Death" is amateur. "Salmon of Knowledge" is amusing as a phrase, but awful for a serious piece. I'll agree he's boring. We all deal with cliche, but instead of saying old things in a new way, he says old things in the old ways, but garnished with extra vocabulary.
As a side note, it seems verses referencing blond bicyclists shall forever remind me of *jack-cade, even as much as he may irrationally hate the poet's work.
As a side note, it seems verses referencing blond bicyclists shall forever remind me of *jack-cade, even as much as he may irrationally hate the poet's work.
The Salmon of Knowledge is an Irish folk tale. Like a lot of Irish poets, O'Brien's poetic authenticity seems to be rooted in his being 'deeply in touch' with the country's folk traditions. It sometimes feels a little bit cheaty - imagine an English poet touring the US and assuming a gravitas because he can write about Robin Hood and Eccles cakes.
The extra vocabulary gets oppressively dull:
"Estuarine polyps and leathery excrescenses", "the isomers of boredom" (ouch! Obscure vocab + abstraction!)
The extra vocabulary gets oppressively dull:
"Estuarine polyps and leathery excrescenses", "the isomers of boredom" (ouch! Obscure vocab + abstraction!)
Does the folk tale have anything to do with the poem?
I agree, it's painful. I'd much rather buy a thesaurus than his book--it'd be more entertaining, too.
So, how did he manage to win? Surely the judging committee would be able to see the same faults that we do. I don't know much about the politics of poetry on your island.
I agree, it's painful. I'd much rather buy a thesaurus than his book--it'd be more entertaining, too.
So, how did he manage to win? Surely the judging committee would be able to see the same faults that we do. I don't know much about the politics of poetry on your island.
Well, the fact that he was on the judging panel of the same prize in the year prior to winning it, and his equally pointlessly wordy review snippets adorn the back of a not insignificant number of heavyweight poetry releases ... you know, that says everything really.
I don't think it's intentional nepotism. Rather, it's luvvie syndrome. He moves in a circle of critically pampered poets who all think of each other as extraordinary human beings and have great difficult identifying faults in each other's work. As James says, it's highly likely that what he won was the 'Services to Poetry' prize in all but name.
I don't think it's intentional nepotism. Rather, it's luvvie syndrome. He moves in a circle of critically pampered poets who all think of each other as extraordinary human beings and have great difficult identifying faults in each other's work. As James says, it's highly likely that what he won was the 'Services to Poetry' prize in all but name.
Ah--sounds similar to a great deal of canonized circles. Are we set to bring about the Revolution, then?
you believe that Sean O'Brien was attempting a Dunthorne? if so, the form is clearly well beyond his powers.
Nah, but I was hopeful while reading, and that hope comprised the emotional climax of the poem for me.
I agree. It should have read:
Now blonde girls zip with flying skirts
Across the cobblestones on iron bicycles:
A tripped trapped wheel sends one diving
Into a bollard with a vase-like skull;
The second gaped back at the fragments
And didn't see the man with the hedge-trimmer,
Then the lorry driver looked across at the mince
Splatting the final blonde against the braking bus,
Her eye plopped onto the tarmac
and into the drain grill like an easy goal,
Its momentary love and happenstance.
Now blonde girls zip with flying skirts
Across the cobblestones on iron bicycles:
A tripped trapped wheel sends one diving
Into a bollard with a vase-like skull;
The second gaped back at the fragments
And didn't see the man with the hedge-trimmer,
Then the lorry driver looked across at the mince
Splatting the final blonde against the braking bus,
Her eye plopped onto the tarmac
and into the drain grill like an easy goal,
Its momentary love and happenstance.
Heh. Olive eating blonde bicyclists?
Sometimes, but they usually get killed or injured somehow. I was disappointed that we don't find out what happens to the bicyclists here.
They ride over cobbles. Ouch!
Point!
I like the font being so fantasy novel. See: [link]
The 'spartan chair' on page 1 interested me, but by the time I'd made it to the Water-Gardens, the 'octogenarian specialists' was enough to turn me off again. Neither his imagery, nor the messages behind the poems previewed there, so much as raised my eyebrows.
I loooathe Sean O'Brien. Perhaps unjustly so, but I allow myself a little space for powerful loathing! I first saw him when he and Daisy Goodwin and someone else were presenting the TS Eliot prize in '06. He had a richly pompous air about him. Since then, his name has come up again and again on the back of books spouting pretentious garbage. Then I found out he'd brought out a new translation of 'The Inferno'. I had a very brief look at the contents of 'The Drowned Book' and felt the same as James.
So all in all, he's a bit of a symbol of what is off-putting about modern establishment poetry - straining hard for a sense of grandioseness, importance, gravity and learnedness.
I don't see why poetry couldn't appear in London papers, although I suspect popular poetry would get just as bad very quickly for different reasons. You need some kind of scene that's driven neither by mainstream appeal, nor by the loose-knit establishment, nor by a sort of affectation-riddled clique. Not sure where such a thing might come from though!
So all in all, he's a bit of a symbol of what is off-putting about modern establishment poetry - straining hard for a sense of grandioseness, importance, gravity and learnedness.
I don't see why poetry couldn't appear in London papers, although I suspect popular poetry would get just as bad very quickly for different reasons. You need some kind of scene that's driven neither by mainstream appeal, nor by the loose-knit establishment, nor by a sort of affectation-riddled clique. Not sure where such a thing might come from though!
And more important, of course, is the fact that it won BOTH the Forward prize AND the TS Eliot prize. And beat out Edwin Morgan, who's a living legend (and has never won) -- and in the case of the Forward, Luke Kennard. Both prizes can't seem to make up their minds whether they are awards for single books (as they are meant to be) or for lifelong '
oetic achievement'.
Anyway, I didn't like it much. I could tell throughout that it was "good writing" (or, as you say, proficient technically) but it basically bored the socks off me. It also felt very self-consciously aiming at greatness, in that Geoff Hill manner. I mean the first poem there with its rather pointless King Lear epigraph kind of says it all. That said, Water-Gardens was one from the book that I quite liked.
This has of course been all over the place ever since the TS was announced. I don't really have much to say on it that's interesting or new, myself.
oetic achievement'. Anyway, I didn't like it much. I could tell throughout that it was "good writing" (or, as you say, proficient technically) but it basically bored the socks off me. It also felt very self-consciously aiming at greatness, in that Geoff Hill manner. I mean the first poem there with its rather pointless King Lear epigraph kind of says it all. That said, Water-Gardens was one from the book that I quite liked.
This has of course been all over the place ever since the TS was announced. I don't really have much to say on it that's interesting or new, myself.
yes i realise i'm very late to the party on this one, the reason being, i just don't follow prizes or established poetry in the UK. i only took a look at The Drowned Book in response to that blog you linked to in your journal. there, it talked about the main poetry publishers, and i realised i didn't own a single book of new poetry by any of them. so i thought i'd better take a look and see what they were publishing. off i went to Picador, Jonathan Cape, Faber. golly, their websites are dull, and the poetry not especially visible. i only found The Drowned Book because i was kind of aware of it and hence looking for it. and on reading a few pages, the thought occurred - well this double-prize winning machine of a book is why no one buys modern poetry. that and how dreadfully dowdy the main poetry publishers present themselves as being. Salt and Bluechrome have much more exciting sites, though i found Salt's 'we give no advances, you have to be a multi-tasking, tap-dancing horse because no one's going to buy your book otherwise' undoubtedly a realistic assessment but a bit dispiriting all the same. back to the main publishers, i guess i feel they're sitting back on funds from the Eliot/Hughes/Larkin etc. estates to put out a little new poetry each year, but just to try and garner presigious literary prizes. no sense of an audience. no sense of trying to find an audience.
All of that is very true -- in Faber's case, at least. The rest don't really have a backlist of dead poets per se, and do put out quite a few new poets. It's also a little unfair to say any of them produce exclusively boring books -- from Faber there's Daljit Nagra and Alice Oswald (deserving Faber and TS Eliot winners, both of them); I don't know any new-new poets from Cape but some good contemporaries are Jean Sprackland (recent winner of the Costa award), John Burnside, James Sheard, Robert Crawford etc; Picador publish some very good books though they're all a bit Don Patersonified (a little samey): Jason Polley, Frances Leviston, Annie Freud, etc. I don't like many of the books on the Carcanet list, though they do some good imports -- Louise Gluck and the like.
Faber publish miniscule numbers of truly new poets. I like a lot of Salt books (though vastly more leave me head-scratching, to be honest). I also like Shearsman books (Claire Crowther's recent collection with them, Stretch of Closures, is excellent), and I expect the Rialto press publish some good books, too. I can't speak for Bluechrome, having never actually read one of their books (shame on me), but they're publishing Jon so I'm sure they do fine. And there are of course countless other presses doing excellent things.
I don't know if it's fair to lump the blame for poetry unpopularity with the big publishers or the prizewinners who come from their ranks. Daljit Nagra and his poetry goes directly against that, really -- his stuff appeals very readily to an audience who usually don't read poetry, I'd say.
Faber publish miniscule numbers of truly new poets. I like a lot of Salt books (though vastly more leave me head-scratching, to be honest). I also like Shearsman books (Claire Crowther's recent collection with them, Stretch of Closures, is excellent), and I expect the Rialto press publish some good books, too. I can't speak for Bluechrome, having never actually read one of their books (shame on me), but they're publishing Jon so I'm sure they do fine. And there are of course countless other presses doing excellent things.
I don't know if it's fair to lump the blame for poetry unpopularity with the big publishers or the prizewinners who come from their ranks. Daljit Nagra and his poetry goes directly against that, really -- his stuff appeals very readily to an audience who usually don't read poetry, I'd say.
well, agreed i arrived at my position in a somewhat cursory manner. still, i went to those sites as a buyer looking to see what they had to offer. now admittedly if i'd trawled through page after page i might have found Daljit Nagra, but why wasn't he being pushed at me in flashing lights? the sites were all so dull i just left. i did buy something today - from Salt. so maybe Picador do publish some good books, but on the strength of the websites, i'd sack the marketing teams. doubly because is modern poetry unpopular, or are just people hugely unaware of it? i'd say the latter. in which case, it's surely the duty of the seller to raise awareness. is it really so impossible to get a daily poem in The Metro, or The London Paper, just for starters?
Well yes, absolutely -- their sites are boring as hell. But how many people do you really think, outside of regular buyers of poetry, go to publishers in order to buy books? I reckon barely any; most will either buy from shops (which is still where most sales happen, so I'm told, and hence why the big publishers do so well comparatively...though Salt are definitely muscling in) or from places like Amazon.
This is getting into a very different discussion, I guess, but re papers: yes, it probably IS really quite difficult. And even if it weren't, it would be the usual, accessible stuff -- boring poems from Armitage and the like (not that he doesn't write very good poems as well). And it would probably propogate the OMG poetry needs saving! myth that passes hands just about everywhere -- and which is complete rubbish, as the Salt lot are quick to point out. Various papers run poems or poem explications (a la Frieda Hughes in the Times [who is bloody useless]), but I don't know how much good it really does.
This is getting into a very different discussion, I guess, but re papers: yes, it probably IS really quite difficult. And even if it weren't, it would be the usual, accessible stuff -- boring poems from Armitage and the like (not that he doesn't write very good poems as well). And it would probably propogate the OMG poetry needs saving! myth that passes hands just about everywhere -- and which is complete rubbish, as the Salt lot are quick to point out. Various papers run poems or poem explications (a la Frieda Hughes in the Times [who is bloody useless]), but I don't know how much good it really does.