Clare O'Brien

@clareobrien.bsky.social

2208 Followers 1023 Following

Writer. Music fan. 2025 Poet in Residence, Inverewe Garden, Scottish Highlands. Poetry chapbooks 'Breathing Out Becomes White And Snowfall' & 'Who Am I Supposed To Be Driving?' & novelette 'Airloc' out now. Links: clarevobrien.weebly.com

ME TWO by Clare O'Brien Because I thought I’d lose my mind I chickened out and didn’t fight. I’m leaving all that shit behind. When those around me were unkind I learned to smile instead of bite, because I thought I’d lose my mind. Too scared to let the dark unwind, I cowered in the alien light. I’m leaving all that shit behind. I let our lives be intertwined, I shut my mouth, kept things polite, because I thought I’d lose my mind. Fuck your idea of womankind. I want my own kind of delight. Because I know I’d lose my mind, I’m leaving all that shit behind.
'This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Bronte' by Deborah Lutz
FULL CIRCLE a golden shovel by Clare O'Brien “The land is an ark, full of things waiting.” - Wendell Berry, ‘A Wet Time’ Our vows of love and trust were made again two decades past, the day we brought our children here and set our lives upon this land. We grew our food, our house, made columbines and bluebells bloom. It is a world we know. This place has sheltered, held and fed us, been an escape from nightmare, drought and doubt. It has been nursery and ark. It has swallowed our sweat, welcomed our dead. Its undulations are full of those who walked with us, our loss and love, the vanished voices of dog and cat and bird and pig. This place is strong. Knowing these things, and holding fast, we return to ourselves, and find each other waiting.
NETWORK by Clare O’Brien Ravenous, I surf the waves. The cuckoo in my pocket twitters, greedy for a meal. I vomit my attention in its mouth and feel its haptic feedback fingertip me forward. I can only tweet, birdsong into a sticky web. No satisfaction for the hunger that snared me. This net is strong enough to capture birds, however loud they sing. Bound like a bug, I click
L to R: Ginevra House, Clare O'Brien, Rob Mckean pictured at the old WW2 sea defences at Cove, on Loch Ewe, Scotland
LINE BREAK by Clare O’Brien In memory of Chris Cornell At the start, it was the careful rope, unfurled so you, a god three inches tall, could abseil down my wooden stairs. From my sleep I watched as you made your slow way down into my world, your tiny ice axe in your hand. When I dreamed, you were my life support. And then you were my text. I translated you into a thousand languages. I worked within a Babel-tower, your face at every window. Outside, your songs were shepherds. Your voice drove the winds, made the seasons turn. When you sang, the words cracked like a whip. When you made me your friend, the tower filled up with rattling shadows. Outside in the sun we talked and touched like humans; you aged, like the mortal you had become. You climbed, higher, towards the stars, into the thinning air. The line was still between us. I held on tight. When the rope went slack, I thought you’d only stopped to catch your breath. I did not call for help. I waited on the ledge. When your voice crackled and grew faint I blamed the static in the atmosphere. Midway through Spring, the line went dead. Now all is still. While you were hanging broken in your bathroom, I was sorting haunted pixels from the show, constructing a reliquary to post back down the wire. Your dead of night bled into my new dawn. Our line is broken. I never saw that you would be the one to fall.
'Power Cut' by Clare O'Brien
The forecast...
Poem 'Excommunicate' by Clare O'Brien
'The Hill In The Dark Grove' by Liam Higginson
An extract from 'An Art Deco Sideboard' by Clare O'Brien at TSS Publishing
Large Newfoundland puppy on top of a heap of grass clippings, wearing many of them in his fur.
'Late In The Day' by Tessa Hadley 'Making It So' by Patrick Stewart 'The Lamb' by Lucy Rose 'What Is Real?' by Adam Becker
'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens
'Northern Lights' by Philip Pullman
'The Great Gatsby' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
'Atonement' by Ian McEwan
'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley
'Death Comes To Pemberley' by P.D. James
'The Essex Serpent' by Sarah Perry
'The Thirteenth Tale' by Diane Setterfield
'To Kill A Mockingbird' by Harper Lee
'I Claudius' by Robert Graves
Trump and Farage laughing together in front of a golden lift
'The Turn Of The Screw' by Henry James
'Dark Matter' by Blake Crouch
'The Paying Guests' by Sarah Waters
'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood
'The Go-Between' by L.P. Hartley
'Alice in Wonderland' by Lewis Carroll
'Poor Things' by Alasdair Gray
'The French Lieutenant's Woman' by John Fowles
'A Passage to India' by E.M. Forster
'Small Things Like These' by Claire Keegan
'The Buddha Of Suburbia' by Hanif Kureishi
'Under The Skin' by Michel Faber
'Rebecca' by Daphne du Maurier
'Women In Love' by D.H. Lawrence
'Watership Down' by Richard Adams
'The Silence of the Lambs' by Thomas Harris
'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel
'Cloud Atlas' by David Mitchell
'Girl With A Pearl Earring' by Tracy Chevalier
'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' by Susanna Clarke
'The Hours' by Michael Cunningham
'Normal Rules Don't Apply' by Kate Atkinson 'Hawthorn' by Elaine Thomson 'Look Closer' by Robert Douglas Fairhurst Super-Infinite' by Katherine Rundell 'Roads of Destiny & Other Tales of Alternative Histories & Parallel Realms'
PERENNIAL by Clare O’Brien It was hard to get you out. You clung on to my bones, Unwilling to emerge into the light. The doctor braced his foot against the table, uprooted you at last. Eyes screwed up against the glare, you howled and thrashed, screaming like a mandrake. They wiped away the blood, packed my complaining guts back in the hole they’d dug. You grew up in your green and golden fury, soaked up sunlight, guzzled the wet ground dry. You filled the sky with pollen as you breathed your life across the land. Sewn back together like Mary Shelley’s monster, I watched you drop your seeds into the soil. I kept my mouth shut every time you crashed. I waned slowly as you waxed. I grow my food from rooted sacrificial vines, tiny lives which fruit each June and wither in October. I bury them, return them rotted to the earth to feed the worms. But you are a perennial, rekindling the fierce life I gave to you with every season, every morning, every hour that remains until the blade which cut you free will cut me down.
NORTH COAST 500 by Clare O'Brien “Scotland’s ultimate road trip…stunning coastal scenery, white sandy beaches, rugged mountains, remote fishing villages, hidden gems, and a wealth of unforgettable experiences.” Released from clockwork time and tide, they come to play. To race on thunderwheels, to bag the mountains, take the trophies home, to pin the light on Instagram. None of that is real. They think they make the most of us, our big wild skies, unfathomable lives. Complete the circle, log the time they spent, count the cash they didn’t. When the weather closes in they will return us to ourselves, a tattered library book. The land they borrowed licks its wounds and weeps. In spring they will come back.
"When I contacted Victoria Hervey to confirm that she had called Virginia Giuffre a ‘whore’, she doubled down on the comment. ‘It’s what anyone with a brain knows,’ she told me by email. ‘I think I did call her a druggie hooker. Not sure the exact wording.’ She then recommended a couple of online commentators I might read, including Jay Beecher, a former Ukip activist who was alleged last year by the Observer to have been paid £80,000 by someone working for Ghislaine Maxwell’s family to ‘investigate’ Giuffre. Lady Victoria, sister of the 8th Marquess of Bristol, is said by Vanity Fair to be a supporter of Reform UK. She admires Donald Trump and collects MAGA hats, telling the magazine that it’s time, this spring, to get one that says ‘Make England Great Again’."
'Breathing Out Becomes White And Snowfall' by Clare O'Brien (Intergraphia Books) https://intergraphia.cargo.site/Clare-O-Brien
'The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox' by Maggie O'Farrell 'The Hills Is Lonely' by Lillian Beckwith 'The Need' by Helen Phillips 'Caledonian Road' by Andrew O'Hagan 'Alfred Buckham: Daredevil Photographer' by Louise Pearson
Song Of Sixpence What swims in gravy under puff pastry layers? The black birds are silenced. The proof’s in the eating. - Clare O’Brien
Song For A Sad Barista (after Charlie Chaplin) By Clare O'Brien Smile, though your face is aching Smile, even though you’re faking Never forget to reflect their design So smile, though the coffee’s rotten Smile, that’ll be forgotten You’ll see they won’t mind if it’s vile If you just smile. Your attitude is telling When you are not upselling Make sure you bump up the price ere they go And smile, though your feet are hurting Smile, and you’ll be converting Lattes to credits on your file If you just smile