Bee Journal (The Birds and the Bees)

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The Birds and the Bees series from Vintage Classics - beautiful editions of the finest British nature writing Bee Journal is a poem-journal of beekeeping that chronicles the life of the hive. It observes the living architecture of the comb, the range and locality of the colony; its flights, flowers, water sources, parasites, lives and deaths. Because of its genesis as a working journal, there is here an unusual intimacy and scrutiny of life and death in nature. The language is dense and clotted, the imagery thrillingly fresh, and the observing eye close, scrupulous and full of wonder. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR

Reviews

Sean Borodale is without doubt the most exciting new poet I have read since Alice Oswald. His Bee Journal raises the bar for us all and announces a thrilling new voice in British poetry -- Carol Ann Duffy
Truly heady and intense poems, honey itself in poetic form, a sustained tour de force of language and thought -- Simon Armitage
This book is a kind of uncut home-movie of bees. I like its oddness and hurriedness, its way of catching the world exactly as it happens in the split-second before it sets into poetry. These are pre-poems, note-poems dictated by phenomena. Their context is bees, but their subject (intriguingly) is Time... -- Alice Oswald
Harbours great energy and abundant imagination...a strikingly original voice * Resurgence *
Borodale is an extremely accomplished poetthe most beautiful expression of what it is like to live with bees that you could hope to findthey show a wonderful clarity of thought and expression and a great talent for capturing an impression. The recent rising popularity of beekeeping has spawned a number of popular books on the subject but this towers above them all in ambition and emotional effect. It is an exquisite window into bees and beekeeping -- Ian Douglas * Telegraph *

Author Bio

Sean Borodale was born in London and works as a poet and artist. His first collection of poetry, Bee Journal, was shortlisted for the 2012 Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, the Costa Poetry Book Award and the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2014 he was selected as one of twenty Next Generation Poets. He currently teaches Creative Writing at Royal Holloway.