A Review of Sean Borodale’s INMATES – By Vikki C.
Exploring the interface of human experience and non-human other, Sean Borodale’s Inmates is deeply attentive to details which place us as witness to a surreal insect-human vernacular. Through a sequence referencing insect and bug variants, we are elevated in not only sensing, but processing the world with both heightened pleasure and instinct. This sensitivity draws us into deep compassion for these small creatures often constrained by their habitats like the book's many insects which occupy spaces within the poet's own home.
For one, their easily overlooked life-death cycles are foregrounded in fresh, unexpected ways that magnify the challenges and dwindling populations faced by these non-human captives. Likewise, Borodale’s metaphors extend seamlessly to the trappings of our human lives where the poet's treatment is equally light-handed and adept.
Many of the book's poems deal with the subject's death and transience, alluding organically to our urgent ecological crisis. This dioramic approach seamlessly marries human experience with both non-human and wider ecological terrain, as depicted in 'Voice Residue of a Mayfly at the Site of its Empty Exoskeleton'. The poem builds an interior landscape (post death) from an external landscape which has nourished the "speaker" throughout its life. The subject traverses seasonal memories to intuit its origins whilst demonstrating that even what remains physically – a remnant “skin” – has a voice which too persists with a yearning to belong.
Inmates was published by Jonathan Cape in 2020 and title aside, is a work which is clearly aware and empathetic of a broader world in pandemic lockdown.
An utterly mesmerising collection crafted from beautiful language and perceptions that point inwards to the spirit and the sublime music of the non-human other. And as reader, we are better for this overlapping microcosm where we learn to envision ourselves in the resilience of small wonders.