Nature and The Environment
Steve Benbow and Sean Borodale .
Chaired by John Carey
Inspired by Bees: Poet’s Muse and Lessons for Life
2:00pm | Friday 14 September 2012Tickets: | Duration: | Venue: |
£N/A | 1 Hour | Blenheim Palace: The Orangery |
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This was an Oxford Literary Festival 2012 Event.
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Beekeepers Steve Benbow and Sean Borodale approach one of our most-loved insects from two different angles in this year’s University of Worcester lecture. Benbow, in his The Urban Beekeeper, offers a practical guide to keeping bees and making your own honey, while Borodale, in his highly original Bee Journal, chronicles the life of a hive in a series of poems. Together, they will discuss what we can learn from the way bees live their life, do they have lessons to teach us on working for the greater good? And what is it about bees that fires our imagination? And, importantly, what can we do to help preserve the threatened bee. Along the way, there will also be insights in how to start a bee hive yourself and poetry readings.
Benbow started his first hive ten years ago on the roof of his tower block in Bermondsey and now has 30 sites across the city including on top of the Tate Modern, Tate Britain and National Portrait Gallery. Borodale is a poet and artist. He wrote his poetry debut, Bee Journal, at the hive, wearing a veil and gloves. It explores life and death in the wild and the relationship between the keeper and the kept and between the domestic and the wild. Borodale was described by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy as ‘a thrilling new voice in British poetry’.
The event is chaired by Prof John Carey, a literary critic and emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. Carey has his own apiary in Oxfordshire and markets the honey through a local store.
The price for this event includes a glass of wine.