Sean O'Brien (writer)

Sean O'Brien
Born (1952-12-19) 19 December 1952
London
Nationality British
Genres poet, critic, playwright

Sean O'Brien (born 19 December 1952 in London) is a British poet, critic, playwright. Prizes he has garnered include the Eric Gregory Award (1979), the Somerset Maugham Award (1984), the Cholmondeley Award (1988), the Forward Poetry Prize (2001 and 2007) and the T. S. Eliot Prize (2007). He is one of only two poets (the other being John Burnside) to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same collection of poems (The Drowned Book). He grew up in Hull, was educated at Selwyn College,[1] University of Cambridge and has lived in Newcastle upon Tyne since 1990.

Career

O Brien's book of essays on contemporary poetry, The Deregulated Muse (Bloodaxe), was published in 1998, as was his anthology The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945 (Picador). Cousin Coat: Selected Poems 1976–2001 (Picador) was published in 2002. Sean O'Brien's new verse version of Dante's Inferno was published by Picador in October 2006. His six collections of poetry to date have all won awards. In 2007 he won the Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award, Forward Prize for Best Collection and the T S Eliot Prize for The Drowned Book (Picador, 2007). This was the first time a poet had been awarded the Forward and the Eliot prizes in the same year. In 2006, he was appointed Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and was previously Professor of Poetry at Sheffield Hallam University. He is a Vice-President of the Poetry Society.[2] He was co-founder of the literary magazine The Printer's Devil and contributes reviews to newspapers and magazines including The Sunday Times and The Times Literary Supplement and is a regular broadcaster on radio. His writing for television includes "Cousin Coat", a poem-film in Wordworks (Tyne Tees Television, 1991); "Cantona", a poem-film in On the Line (BBC2, 1994); Strong Language, a 45-minute poem-film (Channel 4, 1997) and The Poet Who Left the Page, a profile of Simon Armitage (BBC4, 2002). Other significant work includes a radio adaptation for BBC Radio 4 of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Awards and honours

Bibliography

Poetry collections

Plays

Novels

Short story collections

Literary criticism books

Anthologies as editor

References

  1. Selwyn College Freshmen 1971 http://www.selwyn.saund.co.uk/1971freshmen1.html
  2. "The Poetry Society". The Poetry Society. Retrieved 24 January 2014.
  3. "American Academy of Arts and Letters – Home". Artsandletters.org. Retrieved 24 January 2014.
  4. Forward Arts Foundation
  5. "The Northern Rock Foundation Writer's Award 2007". The Northern Rock Foundation. 22 March 2007. Retrieved 23 March 2007.
  6. BBC News: "O'Brien honoured with poetry win".
  7. "Flambard Press". Flambard Press. 26 September 2012. Retrieved 24 January 2014.

Sources

External links

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