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'He's one of the best players I've ever played with. As a forward, I'd say he's the best.' Johnny Sexton Seán O'Brien does not come from a traditional rugby background. He grew up on a farm in Tullow, far from the rugby hotbeds of Limerick and Cork or the fee-paying schools of Dublin. But as he made his way up through the ranks, it soon became clear that he was a very special player and a very special personality. Now, Seán O'Brien tells the remarkable and unlikely story of his rise to the highest levels of world rugby, and of a decade of success with Leinster, Ireland and the British and Irish Lions.
Each poem in Sean O'Brien's superb new collection opens on a wholly different room, vista or landscape, each drawn with the poet's increasingly refined sense of tone, history and rhetorical assurance. The Beautiful Librarians is a stock-taking of sorts, and a celebration of those unsung but central figures in our culture, often overlooked by both capital and official account. Here we find infantrymen, wrestlers, old lushes in the hotel bar - but none more heroic than the librarians of the title, those silent and silencing guardians of literature and knowledge who, the poet reminds us, also had lives of their own to be celebrated. Elsewhere we find a 12-bar blues sung by Ovid, a hymn to a grey rose, a writing course from hell, and a very French exercise in waiting. A book of terrific variety of theme and form, The Beautiful Librarians is another bravura performance from the most garlanded English poet of his generation.
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With an introduction by Helen Dunmore 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.
A welcome addition to Oxford's contemporary poetry list, Sean O'Brien presents his third, and most powerful, book of poems yet. Angry, painful, and politically aware, O'Brien's poems soar by virtue of their energetic rhythms, astute syntax, and fine sense of the possibilities of parody. Sean O'Brien's work has won much admiration among contemporary poets; HMS Glasshouse will surely confirm that reputation.
'Extraordinary . . . great fun' Barry Egan, Irish Sunday Independent 'A wonderful story . . . vivid and comprehensive.' Stephen Jones, Sunday Times ''Throughout it all though there is a feeling of warmth for the sport and for others. Above all there is a sense of achievement . . . Best was never one of the glamour boys, but he deserves star billing.' Daily Telegraph Rory Best is widely-regarded as one of Ireland's greatest ever captains. Entrusted by Joe Schmidt to lead the side that looked on the wane following the 2015 World Cup, Best's inspirational leadership skills and abrasive qualities proved to be the foundation stones for the most successful period in Ireland's history. His first ye...
The USA Today bestselling authors of the Brothers O'Brien series now present the untold saga of Shawn O'Brien . . . A man who tamed the West—one town at a time Unlike his brothers Jacob, Sam, and Patrick, Shawn O'Brien isn't content to settle down on the family ranch in New Mexico Territory. With his razor-sharp eye, lightning-fast draw, and burning thirst for justice, Shawn is carving out a reputation of his own. As a town tamer he takes the most dangerous, lawless towns in the West and makes them safe for decent men, women, and children. When a stagecoach accident leaves Shawn stranded in Holy Rood, Utah, it doesn't take long to realize he's landed in one ornery circle of hell. Ruled by a cruel and cunning crook-turned-merciless dictator named Hank Cobb, Holy Rood is about as unholy a place as any on the frontier. Anyone who breaks Cobb's rules is severely punished. Anyone who defies Cobb's hooded henchmen dies by rope, stake, or guillotine. But Shawn O'Brien isn't just anyone. He's the town tamer. And this time, he's going to paint the town red . . .
From Auden, Larkin, Hardy and MacNeice to the American Blues and the Industrial Revolution, this anthology takes us on a round journey trip through locomotive poetry.
'Night Train' is a collaboration between acclaimed poet Sean O'Brien and artist Birtley Aris. This beautifully produced book is presented as a poet-artist's sketch-cum-notebook, in which the text as well as the artwork is hand drawn.
'You can't get there from here, but if you could, you'd have to take the train'. Ghost Train, Sean O'Brien's fourth collection of poems, rides the network of routes into history, politics, autobiography, and the imaginative region where they meet. The tone of this book is new for thisauthor: sombre and expansive, elegiac and celebratory, Ghost Train is his most subtle book to date.