The Deregulated Muse

by Sean O'Brien

These essays explore the cases, causes, methods, influences, quarrels, and achievements in the work of numerous poets. Among the poets included Larkin, Hughes, Heaney, Reading, Harrison, and Muldoon. A wide range of younger poets are also discussed, Dunmore, D'Aguiar, Maxwell, and Kay. Sean O'Brien is the author of a number of poetry titles, including Ghost Train, winner of the Forward Prize. ""An eminently readable, provocative book not desiccated by its scholarship, this title introduces readers to the diverse, splintered, heterogeneous, conflictive realm of poetry in England, Ireland, and Scotland at the end of the 20th century.""-Choice

Genres: Poetry

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1998

About the author

Sean O'Brien is a British poet, critic and playwright. Prizes he has won include the Eric Gregory Award (1979), the Somerset Maugham Award (1984), the Cholmondeley Award (1988), the Forward Poetry Prize (1995, 2001 and 2007) and the T. S. Eliot Prize (2007). He is one of only four poets (the others being Ted Hughes, John Burnside and Jason Allen-Paisant) to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same collection of poems (The Drowned Book).
Born in London, England, O'Brien grew up in Hull, and was educated at Hymers College and Selwyn College, Cambridge. He has lived since 1990 in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he teaches at the university. He was the Weidenfeld Visiting Professor at St. Anne's College, Oxford, for 2016–17.

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have liked the book better if O'Brien managed to keep his politics out of every other review, and his piece on Don Paterson ('Now, Boys') is too shot full of condescension. Ironic since Paterson, the younger poet, now edits him.