Synopsis
Europa, Sean O’Brien’s ninth collection of poems, is a timely and necessary book. Europe is not a place we can choose to leave: it is also a shared heritage and an age-old state of being, a place where our common dreams, visions and nightmares recur and mutate. In placing our present crises in the context of an imaginative past, O’Brien...
Details
19 April 201864 pages
9781509840410Imprint: Picador
Reviews
The collection's title places its concerns within the political climate of our time . . . Among his exploration of European identity are reflections on a shared history, but also on his own ambiguous sense of place as a vagrant writer . . . O'Brien writes lyrics that are both personal and strangely elliptical . . . Other poems are more anecdotal and grounded in humour.Literary Review
In both technical mastery and his belief in the seriousness of the poetic art, O’Brien is WH Auden’s true inheritor. It is reassuring that poetry of this quality is still being written.The Irish Times
Europa is an imaginative reorientation that reveals a truer picture of ourselves as Europeans, whether we like the fact or not.The Herald
A sense of disorientation pervades Sean O’ Brien’s latest collection, in which the Hull-based poet scrutinises the Britain he knows and its coexistence with Europe – past, present and imaginary. His verse weaves with the familiar loss, madness and melancholy, to particularly powerful effect when he writes in the second person.Nilanjana Roy, Financial Times
