Sean O’Brien (b. 1952) is the author of nine full collections of poetry, several plays and pamphlets, two novels and various translated works. Newcastle University acquired his archive in 2017. To commemorate this, poet and researcher, John Challis, produced an hour-long interview with O’Brien during which he discusses the contents of his archive, his composition process, his work as a critic and translator, and the poems which he feels showcase his major developments.

When writing poems, O’Brien has stated ‘it’s important that you don’t know everything’, and has suggested that if he had a complete model of the poem in his mind at the start, he probably wouldn’t write it. In the clip below, O’Brien considers his approach to drafting, a process he describes as ‘operating half in the dark, reaching for something that’s there, potentially, but I haven’t yet found.’ O’Brien’s archive is in many ways a repository of thinking on paper, represented by the many drafts of particular poems such as ‘Special Train’, ‘The Red Hospital’ and ‘Cold’, which gradually show the final poem coming into focus.

More on O’Brien’s archive can be found here, along with the complete hour-long interview in which O’Brien also discusses the subjects that recur throughout his nine collections of poetry: history, politics, England, and the dead. An essay by Challis entitled ‘Permanent Afternoons: The Underworld in the Poetry of Sean O’Brien’, published by Wild Court, expands on one of the questions in this interview, which asks O’Brien whether writing can be compared to a process of archiving and cultivating the past.