Asylum

Borodale, S (2018) Asylum. Jonathan Cape, London. ISBN 9781911214021

Abstract

Like his two previous books, Asylum was written live on-site; in this case deep within the caves, mines, quarries, geological and archaeological horizons of the Mendip Hills in Somerset. The poems stage modes of exile in the darkness of earth, enacting solidarity with those others who have made their journey into the underworld – Dante, Orpheus, blinded Oedipus, Euripides. These are semi-dramatic voicings, staged across the thirty-mile theatre of the Mendip subterranean: each an act of recovery, of rescue. Traversing the broken, collapsed, eroded stones, looking for voices that express the damaged and the damned, Asylum pays homage to the darkness of the human cave: its memories and ancient histories, and to its more contemporary signals – internationally owned quarries, abandoned coal mines, decommissioned Cold War bunkers.

Item Type:	Book
Divisions:	School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities
Date Deposited:	12 Dec 2018 19:15
Last Modified:	05 Jan 2022 14:45
URI / Page ID:	https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/id/eprint/11827

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