Poetry Ireland has announced the appointment of Sean Borodale as its new Poet in Residence.
Sean has been appointed to the post for a two-year period, which will enable Poetry Ireland to forge new creative relationships in the North-East Inner City, as the organisation re-opens its doors at Number 11 Parnell Square and launches The Seamus Heaney Poetry Library early next year.
Liz Kelly, Director of Poetry Ireland, said the organisation was delighted to appoint Sean to the post:
“We are thrilled to have Sean joining us as our Poet in Residence for the next two years. Sean has a wealth of experience and will undoubtedly bring an abundance of creative energy to the role. Sean joins us at an exciting time at Poetry Ireland and will be central to our programming and outreach when we return home to Number 11 Parnell Square, drawing in particular on the new Seamus Heaney Poetry Library, an invaluable material resource encompassing the Laureate’s private library as well as the collections of Austin Clarke and John Jordan in addition to Poetry Ireland’s own 40 year collection.”
Sean Borodale works as an artist, writer, and poet. He studied and later taught at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he was also until recently Hon. Research Fellow in print and text. He has four collections of poetry published by Jonathan Cape. His debut Bee Journal (2012) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and Costa Book Award.
Speaking on his appointment to the role Sean said:
“Thank you to Poetry Ireland and to The Brinkerhoff Foundation for this incredible chance to step in as the third Poetry Ireland Poet in Residence. As Number 11 prepares to open its doors, the residency will be integral to a formative, celebratory moment and I look forward to connecting new communities with the new life of this centre for poetry for the island of Ireland.
I will work to foster new advocates of curiosity and reading, to help to open doors in language, to create catalysts for the inventive and inclusive, to inspire new readers, poets and audiences. An integral part of this residency will be to take bearings and to glean from books that, among which, Seamus Heaney gathered as his personal library, now instated as part of the Library in Parnell Square. This will inspire an immensely exciting programme of research and reading responses.
I look forward to creating a rich and engaging programme of workshops, talks and performances to celebrate and share poetry over the next two years and to launch a series of exciting programmes to engage the poetry-writing public.
I will draw on my long experience of print and binding to help to establish Number 11 as a laboratory for cutting-edge interdisciplinary thinking and practice around poetry, multi-disciplinary research and making – and to equip and inspire a new generation of poets in setting up zines and collective independent publishing projects, and to create settings for exploration of shared voice.
I will be working to engage with communities in the inner city around Parnell Square, to ask together and to discover in practice: what do we want, and what do we need to explore and support our poetic voices?”
Supported by The Adrian Brinkerhoff Foundation, the poet in residence will connect the public with poetry drawing on the new poetry library, to facilitate live and online outreach programmes with people of all ages and backgrounds, readings and events with local community groups and schools, work in multi-disciplinary settings, work with partner organisations, and with the Poetry Ireland team to present readings and public engagement initiatives.
Sean Borodale Biography
Sean Borodale works as an artist, writer, poet. He studied and later taught at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he was also until recently Hon. Research Fellow in print and text. He has four collections of poetry published by Jonathan Cape. His debut Bee Journal (2012) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and Costa Book Award.
His latest collection Inmates was described in the Harvard Review as achieving ‘existential subliminty unlike anything else in contemporary poetry’. He was a Granta New Poet in 2012 and a Poetry Book Society Next Generation Poet in 2014. Mighty Beast, a documentary poem for BBC Radio 3 about cattle markets and modern farming practices in the UK won a Radio Academy Gold Award for Best Feature or Documentary.
His topographical poem Notes for an Atlas (Isinglass 2007), written whilst walking around London, was adapted and directed as a performance by Mark Rylance for London’s Southbank Festival Hall. Fellowships and residences include Guest Artist at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam, Oscar Wilde Visiting Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, Creative Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge, inaugural writer-in-residence at Portiuncula University Hospital, ‘Data Stories’ writer-in-residence in Social Sciences Maynooth University, and the National Museum of Ireland’s ‘Onsight’ commission.
Photograph (c) Mark Vessey
