Sean Borodale

Biography
S


Sean Borodale was Northern Arts Fellow of the Wordsworth Trust in 1999 and Guest Artist at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam in 2002. From 2002-7 he was a teaching fellow at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL.

His long topographical work Notes for an Atlas was recommended by Robert Macfarlane in the Guardian Summer Books 2005. It was performed in 2007 at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall, directed by Mark Rylance, as part of the first London Festival of Literature. Recent projects include Grey Matter with artist Jonathan Houlding which included a residency at the Fundacion Pilar i Joan Miro, Mallorca, 2009
.

Bee Journal, his debut full-length collection of poems, will be published by Jonathan Cape in July 2012 < more >


 



'Harbours great energy and abundant imagination ... a strikingly original voice'

Resurgence


Notes for an Atlas is 'an extraordinary 370-page poem written whilst walking through London ... Rings with sadness, haphazardness and utterly modern beauty'

Guardian

author image

N E W S

August 2012
Sean Borodale will be reading at Topping's bookshop in Bath on Wednesday 8th August at 8pm ...


July 2012
Sean Borodale will be reading from his debut collection Bee Journal on Saturday 21st July at the Port Eliot Festival ...

Bee Journal to be published by Jonathan Cape on July 5th ...


May 2012
Sean Borodale is a GRANTA NEW POET ...


December 2011
Five poems from Bee Journal in BLAZEVOX11 - Winter 2011 ...


November 2011
Pages from Bee Journal pamphlet is recommended by Simon Armitage in the Guardian Books of the Year 2011 ...

'Queen' wins third prize in the Bridport Poetry Competition 2011, judged by Carol Ann Duffy ...


September 2011
Lyrigraph for the Upper Mells Stream (Damp Night)
in The Furthest Reach
Poetry Review Volume 101,
No.3 Autumn 2011 ...



August 2011
NEW PUBLICATION:
Pages from Bee Journal all-day launch of a 16-page pamphlet as part of Exmoor Honey Fest, Dunster.
27th August 2011 ...



Ju
ly 2011
Reading from Notes for an Atlas at 7.30pm Sunday Sound Waves // 24 July – 28 August 2011 / 18:00 – 21:00 @ Galerie8, London. Guest Curated by Alexa Kusber ...


June 2011
'Field Theatre: Dramatic Tendencies in Lyric Poetry'
Poetry in Process, Irish Centre for Poetry Studies, Mater Dei Institute, Dublin, Saturday 18th June ...



May 2011

Bee Journal: 7th August in The Rialto Issue 72 ...

Lyrigraph for Ice Forming on a Bucket of Water & Lyrigraph for a Road at Midwinter in BRAND 07 ...


April 2011

Extract from Bee Journal in Poetry Ireland Review Issue 103, pages 67-73


February 2011
Where is the Poet? p15-19, Moving Between the Lines, ed. Suze Adams, published by Wild Conversations Press for PLaCE, Bristol, 2011.
Conference hosted by UWE, Bristol on 01/02 July 2010 – a collaborative venture between The School of Creative Arts, UWE and the Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.

Where is the Poet? outlines a presentation in which I "introduce my documentation of landscape and exploration of the act of writing. I position a few spotlights along what I consider my path of activity; how an obsession with note-making evolved into two lengthy topographical poems – Walking to Paradise, Notes for an Atlas – using peripatetic movement as a mechanical means for reading a landscape, as a score or script for playing the poetic temperament (instrument) of the writer. I then consider how these works informed what I have come to call lyrigraphs – written in a poetic register, on location in real time, and later read in an attempt to re-invoke some shape of the original place or moment."
For pdf of publication and text, follow ...


January 2011
Notes for an Atlas
on the Hackney Podcast
Episode 20 : Writers on Walking - Sean Borodale
Stewart Home, Iain Sinclair and Lemn Sissay
...

Extract from Bee Journal in The Poet's Progress

Poetry Review Volume 100, No.4 Winter 2010 ...


July 2010
Mighty Beast, a documentary poem
had it's first performance as part of the Bristol Old Vic Ferment series of events ...


March 2010
I am currently working on lyrigraphs - scriptive and documentary poems written on location; this derives from my process of writing and walking for works such as Notes for an Atlas and Walking to Paradise. My focus is now on the lyric poem and its function as an element of invocation - especially within a larger verse work - and the implied or latent drama which lies under the work as a kind of field theatre for both intended and random correspondences.



Home -

Works -

Contact -

 



- Notes for an Atlas, book

TOPOGRAPHICAL WORK

- Notes for an Atlas

- Monument for a Witness

- Walking to Paradise



POEM WORK

- Bee Journal

- Mighty Beast

- Lyrigraphs

- Ice Observatory Surveys




COLLABORATION

- Grey Matter



























 

  images and text © Sean Borodale 1997-2011