Jean O'Brien
Description
Jean O'Brien has had three full collections of poetry published, her latest being Lovely Legs from Salmon Publishing (2009) and two chapbooks. She holds an M.Phil in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. She facilitates creative writing classes for a wide variety or organizations from the Irish Writers' Centre, Dublin City Council and various County Councils, as well as working in Prisons. She was Writer-in-Residence for Co. Laois in 2005. She publishes widely in journals and reviews, her work has been anthologies and she has read numerous times on radio and at public reading.
Books
Lovely Legs
A lively, readable collection concerned with the intricacies of relationships and the many moral contradictions of society,..they are all very clearly in O'Brien's voice, a seemingly carefree lilt which nonetheless exudes complexity and depth....Similarly, the many poems here addressed to or about O'Brien's 'younger self' attempt to civilise the unruliness of childhood, and, in a self-mythologising turn, lessons are always learnt. Often they are comically disproportionate to the experience, such as when O'Brien recalls how, as children travelling along redbrick lanes, she and her friends were approached by a pervert, a Joycean encounter which'made us remeber/to hurry home for 'tea. Val Nolan Poetry Ireland Review 98, 2009. In a book with such a breezy title, bright cover and light tone throughout there’s a much more serious and complex undercurrent at work. Paul Perry Irish Times, May '09
Dangerous dresses
Jean O'Brien is a mistress of endings. Dangerous Dresses is full of poems which turn, then arrive gracefully at a point of neither under, nor overstatement... A stronger presence than these poetic relationships, though, are familial ones. Mother is a Time Traveller, as is daughter, their identities confused, over-printed or stacked inside each other's like a 'Russian Doll;. This is O'Brien's heartland, a territory she makes her own without sentiment or irony, ...This is effortless writing, graceful and exact as any pirouette in its insight.
Reach
Belfast's Lapwing Publication has done considerable service to a host of Southern-based poets, who deserve publication. Jean O'Brien's collection is lively, varied, and very readable. Fred Johnston (Poet & Ed.) Poetry Ireland Review 85, 2006
The shadow keeper
A quietly lyrical note sounds through most of the poems in the Shadow Keeper and her concerns are for the most part comfortingly familiar and domestic. Poems such as "The Shadow Keeper" ('He smiles up at me/with my own eyes') and "Wild Weeds" ('Wild Weeds scatter my garden,/I reap and sow and tidy up') set the overall tone. The simplicity of some of these poems masks a real poetic power, evident in a poem such as "Census": I have no furniture to speak of/just one copper pot given/on marriage by my mother/tied now with twine about my waist,/echoing like a bell in empty space. Fred Johnston (Poet & Ed) Irish Times 1997. These are strong poem, empathetic without drifting into sentimentality Kathleen McCracken, Poetry Ireland Review, Winter '97.