Winner of the T S Eliot Prize for Poetry 2007. The poet Peter Porter, who chaired the judging panel of WN Herbert and Sujata Bhatt, called O'Brien "a major artist" and described The Drowned Book as "fierce, funny and deeply melancholy".
Come for a walk down the river road, For though you're all a long time dead The waters part to let us pass
The way we'd go on summer nights In the times we were children And thought we were lovers.
The Drowned Book is a work of memory, commemoration and loss, dominated by elegies for those the author has loved and admired. Sean O'Brien's exquisite collection is powerfully affecting, sad and often deeply funny; but it is also a dramatically compelling book - disquieting, even - and full of warnings. As the book unfolds, O'Brien's verse occupies an increasingly dark, subterranean territory - where the waters are rising, threatening to overwhelm and ruin the world above.
Winner of both the T. S. Eliot and Forward prizes, The Drowned Book is an extraordinary collection, a classic from one of the leading poets of our time.
Sean O’Brien is a poet, critic, playwright, broadcaster, anthologist and editor. He grew up in Hull and now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University.
