Sean Borodale

Sean Borodale’s Bee Journal  is a startlingly original poetry sequence: a poem-journal of beekeeping that chronicles the life of the hive, from the collection of a small nucleus on the first day to the capture of a swarm two years later.

The book is full of moments of revelation – particularly of the relationship between the domestic and the wild; there is a strong and abiding sense of the unusual intimacy in the deep scrutiny of life and death in nature, in the depiction of the relationship between keeper and kept. Bee Journal is one of the most exciting poetry debuts in years:

“A lot of poems seem to be writing about bees these days, but like the honey he describes, ‘disconcerting, / solid broth / of forest flora full of fox’, these are poems so dense and rich you could stand a spoon in them.” – Simon Armitage