Geoffrey G. O'Brien is an American poet. Educated at Harvard University and the University of Iowa, O'Brien has taught at Brooklyn College, The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and has been the Distinguished Poet in Residence at St. Mary's College of California and the Holloway Lecturer in the Practice of Poetry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently teaches. He also teaches in the Prison University Project at San Quentin.[1][2]
In November 2011, O'Brien was savagely beaten by baton-wielding police, and suffered multiple rib fractures, while attending a peaceful protest. [3]
Contents |
"If O'Brien's poems have a sameness of diction and rhythm that verges on monotonous and impersonal, it's the same sameness of heartbeat and breath, prayer and meditation. It's a poetry that asks for patient attention, and gives back all the void's abundance." [4]
On November 11, 2011, O'Brien took part in Occupy Cal, a demonstration on the Berkley campus in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement. According to reports O'Brien spoke out to a police officer who was hitting a Berkley student because he would not break his link in a human chain. The police officer hit O'Brien in the ribs, a reaction he would later call "brutal." [5]