Culture Matters would like to pay tribute to one of our finest poets, James O’Brien, who passed away on 30th September. As well featuring James in several of our anthologies, The Cry of the Poor (2021/23), The Role of the Artist Under Late Capitalism (Bread & Roses Anthology 2024), We Are All Palestinians (2025), and The White Envelope Book (2025), Culture Matters was proud to have published his poetry collection The Lucky Last at the Terminal of the Dead in June this year.
James ‘Shem’ O’Brien was an award-winning playwright, poet, filmmaker and political activist. He was made an honorary member of the NUM 84/85 and was PCS Branch Secretary at Tate Modern 2000/2016. He published 1986 and other poems in 2017, and The Sacrifice Zones in 2018. His collection Bereavement/Squalor Odes will be published later in 2026.
Shem’s Eulogy by Mike O’Brien
It is fitting that we meet here in St Pat’s, at this juncture in Shem’s spiritual journey. This church is where young Shem made his first communion and Confirmation and to which he now returns, at his request, to begin the next phase of his journey. As Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It:
‘All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts’
It is clear that Shem was a man of many parts: son, brother, playwright, poet, novelist, social-commentator, activist, wizard-uncle.
Shem’s work was hard-hitting, controversial, often savagely comic but most importantly he sought to speak truth to power, seeking out miscarriages of justice; abuse of political or financial power or exploitation of ordinary working and non-working people and rendering their stories on the stage or in his poetry.
The trajectory of Shem’s career was set early. As the 3rd child to Irish emigrees in a family of 10, he saw poverty and discrimination in the era of ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’, at first hand. He sought ways out.
School, however, held no allure for him, home was crowded with up to 10 children by now and after experience working in a factory (from which he felt alienated, confirming his Marxist analysis) and travelling the UK literally (and deliberately as a writing project) as a ‘tramp’, he felt armed with a comprehensive view of the nature of poverty, injustice and exploitation in the UK in its many contexts and guises.
Added to this, with a desire to learn methods of effectively articulating his experience and his vision; a fierce self-educated, non-conformist intelligence and a caustic sense of humour, Shem decided to talk himself into University and became heavily involved in Drama at the Polytechnic of South Wales.
The rest is history.
His work revealed a man of deep principle, an alchemist transmuting ordinary experience, particularly the experience of the very poor and the traduced, into golden insight and hilarious satire.
He needed the right actor to convey this effectively. This was Dan, who would prove an invaluable supporter and brilliant lead man in virtually all of Giro Theatre’s festivals and tours for years to come. Dan and, in particular fellow actor and Shem’s great friend Max, became Shem’s stalwarts. (If you want details of the depths of debauchery that were features of Giro theatre tours speak with Dan afterwards)
It was at his first Edinburgh Festival that Shem came across and established a friendship with the woman who would become the love of his life, Catherine Carney.
Shem would return many times to the Festival establishing a long and productive partnership with Richard DeMarco, an Edinburgh legend himself who championed marginalised and anti-establishment theatre both from Eastern Europe and the UK and found a like-minded support in Shem and who at 94 is too frail to be here although he has expressed a desire to be and to say farewell to Shem.
While residing in Wales, Shem found a natural cause to support in the Miner’s Strike 1984/85 and was awarded honorary membership of the NUM for his efforts. For all the awards and plaudits received throughout his long career, this gave him the most enduring pleasure.
For all his industry in the world of the arts and activism, Shem generally put in an appearance in the Midlands for his family over Christmas. For the kids, his nieces and nephews, it was as if Gandalf had appeared with a box full of tricks, games to play, dramas to enact. To them he was as charismatic as a wizard. He offered them a view of an alternative way of making a living and of being, and maybe influenced them to make their own art, Rhiannon his goddaughter is a case in point.
But eventually Shem was wearied of it. Although he never flagged as a writer, the rigours of holding a theatre company together, of sourcing venues, of touring his work was taking a toll and his physical health was suffering.
Shem did a version of settling down and something radical… he got a job.
He became a Gallery attendant at Tate Modern and became reacquainted with the boss/worker dynamic he had quit when he was 17. His response was to take the lead again and become union shop steward where he was successful in supporting colleagues, improving conditions and pay for the workers.
Work which he informally carried on years later in his semi-retirement for disenfranchised drinking buddies in his chosen watering holes in Smethwick, principally the Blue Gate and the Red Cow.
In due course, for Shem, came the Catherine years, principally in Edinburgh. Reunited with a soul to whom he had been connected across the decades, Shem entered his happiest period which ended when she passed away. Not for the first time, I rescued Shem from one of the furthest extremities of the UK and brought him back to live with us in Rugeley.
Shem further demonstrated his loving and caring nature as we moved into Covid time where he focused his attention on Mom and Jimmy. He was instrumental in helping them move out of Birmingham and to the relative safety of Rugeley. He was loving and attentive to them throughout their final days.
All the time, from his flat behind the Hawthorns up until his last illness he was writing, new works of drama and in particular poetry where he was published by Culture Matters and nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
For me, it is no exaggeration to say that Shem was a great writer and will be remembered as a contemporary Shakespeare with whose words we began. His literary output was similar: 38 plays, 3 books of poetry, 7 novels plus some short films. However ‘the theatrical establishment’ in England has proven too cowardly to commit his work to the modern stage.
But, more importantly, he was also a great man, Shem was a towering, courageous, moral figure; a man capable of great generosity and love; a charismatic force of nature: a work of art creating a deluge of bona fide works of art that I hope the world will finally recognise.
He was my brother, my friend and I and the whole family shall miss him beyond words.
Grief
I see it in the cast of your face:
The Captain Birdseye
Silver mess of your hair;
The unshaven jaw.
The duck-egg blue
That once crackled from your eyes,
Is dissipated into veined shadows
That crawl, like cracked crustaceans,
Across the bones of your cheeks.
You grieve the loss of a future
Once excitedly planned;
The lost intimacy;
Her talk-you-off-the-ledge voice;
The warmth yet reserve,
Like a bitter wind on
A sunny winter’s day;
Or kissing her breasts,
Like dipping your lips
Into a bowl of double cream;
The slip into comfortable patterns
Of give and take,
Back and forth,
To and fro…
So, to fill the black spaces,
To evade the absences
You strike the flint,
Ignite the white heat
Of work, fanned in the
Flapping of imagination.
Banishing doubt,
Biting the bomb and bullet,
You set your shoulder,
Like Sisyphus,
Against the stone
Of destiny
And roll the rock
Your way
Back up the hill,
Where she is waiting.
By Mike O’Brien
James ‘Shem’ O’Brien was born on 2nd June 1958 in Moseley, Birmingham, and passed away at Midland Metropolitan University Hospital, Smethwick, Birmingham on 30th September 2026. He is survived by his siblings Michael, Anne, Margaret, Patricia, Bernadette, Daniel, Una and Damien.
