Driftwork: Selected Poems

by John Burnside

Over thirty-five years and seventeen collections, John Burnside built a body of poetry that was consistently luminous, original and profound, always in thrall to the glamourie – a magical, fleeting enchantment – always in search of settlement, harmony and grace.

His work is both intimately personal and universal, often moving through stages of vulnerability, turbulence, terror, and desire, to artistic positions that are sensitive and highly alert. He risked much for his art and its integrity, in order to arrive at a new and unique understanding of beauty and truth – and to offer a fresh angle from which to view the world, through nature, myth, and magic. For him, every poem was an alchemical transformation, a metamorphosis, an epiphany.