Sean O'Brien FRSL (born 19 December 1952) is a British poet, critic and playwright.

He is one of only four poets (the others being Ted Hughes, John Burnside and Jason Allen-Paisant) to have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same collection of poems (The Drowned Book).

His new verse version of Dante's Inferno was published by Picador in October 2006.

This was the second time a poet had been awarded the Forward and the Eliot prizes in the same year.

[4] He was co-founder of the literary magazine The Printer's Devil, contributes reviews to newspapers and magazines including The Sunday Times and The Times Literary Supplement and is a regular broadcaster on radio.