Selected Poems

Over seventeen years and nine collections, John Burnside has built – in the words of Bernard O’Donoghue – ‘a poetic corpus of the first significance’, a poetry of luminous, limpid grace. His territory is the no-man’s-land of threshold and margin, the charmed half-light of the liminal, a domestic world threaded through with mystery, myth and longing. In this Selected Poems we can see themes emerge and develop within the growing confidence of Burnside’s sinuous lyric poise: the place of the individual in the world, the idea of dwelling, of home, within that community, and the lure of absence and escape set against the possibilities of renewal and continuity. This is consummate, immaculate work born out of a lean and agile craftsmanship, profound philosophical thought and a haunted, haunting imagination; the result is a poetry that makes intimate, resonant, exquisite music.

Reviews of Selected Poems

John Burnside has published seven works of fiction and eleven works of poetry, including The Asylum Ward, which won the 2000 Whitbread Poetry Award. His latest collection, Black Cat Bone, won the T S Eliot Award in 2012. His memoir, A Lie About My Father, was published in 2006 was the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year. The second volume of his memoir, Waking Up In Toytown, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2010. A Summer of Drowning was shortlisted for the 2011 Costa Novel Award.