Downriver

by Sean O'Brien

From the well known critic and poet comes his first new collection in 5 years Sean O'Brien has published four award-winning collections of poems, most recently Ghost Train (1995) which won the Forward Prize for Best collection. He has recently published the controversial study of contemporary poetry, The Deregulated Muse. His anthology of post war poetry from Britain and Ireland was a huge critical success outdoing all other competitors in the field and looks set to become THE book of the period. Sean O'Brien's poems are as perceptive and as wry as his criticism and often very darkly funny - getting to the heart of everyday lives and details with sensitivity and a little cynicism.

Genres: Poetry

85 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

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 4 out of 5]

The only collection of O’Brien’s I’ve wanted to keep. A tad easier to follow than his later work and with more bite (see ‘A Northern Assembly’, ‘Welcome, Major Poet!’ and ‘Amerika.’)