Learn from this picture how we journey in this world
Slithering as we go, the foolish and the wise…
—John Burnside, “Pieter Brueghel: Winter Landscape with Skaters and a Bird Trap, 1565”
from BLACK CAT BONE (Jonathan Cape, 2011)
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/412331/black-cat-bone-by-john-burnside/9780224093859
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #art #visualart #Bruegel #winter #JohnBurnside
Today's poem:
At Notre Dame de Reims
- by John Burnside
https://www.tumblr.com/ukdamo/802630239647842304/at-notre-dame-de-reims?source=share
#poetry #JohnBurnside #reims #cathedral #StoneMasons #art #creativity #messages #humour #irreverence
Smoke in the woods
like someone walking in a silent film
beside the tracks…
—John Burnside, “Signal Stop, Near Horsley”
published in SELECTED POEMS (Cape, 2006)
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/389400/selected-poems-by-burnside-john/9780224078030
At times I think what makes us who we are
is neither kinship nor our given states
but something lost between the world we own
and what we dream about behind the names
on days like this
—John Burnside, “History”
Published in SELECTED POEMS (Jonathan Cape, 2006)
https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/389400/selected-poems-by-burnside-john/9780224078030
#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #September11 #history #JohnBurnside
“His life’s work is like a dark, glittering, ethereal yet earthy river of thought, full of angels, ghosts, nocturnes, animals. These are books as brimming with spirit & light as they are with eroticism & violence”
—Seán Hewitt on John Burnside’s poetry & fiction
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/aug/11/where-to-start-with-john-burnside
It gets late early out here
in the lacklustre places,
wind in the trees and the foodstalls’
ricepaper lamplight, fading and blurred with rain…
—John Burnside, “Travelling South, Scotland, August 2012”
published in BLACK MIDDENS: New Writing Scotland 31 (ASL, 2013)
“It’s impossible not to love the world more when reading Burnside, and impossible not to be more scared and saddened while doing so. He was the ideal laureate of our age, painfully alive to the glory of what we’re losing.”
—Sarah Crown reviews John Burnside’s posthumously published final poetry collection THE EMPIRE OF FORGETTING
#Scottish #literature #contemporary #poetry #anthropocene #naturewriting #JohnBurnside
"Give me a little less
with every dawn."
Marjorie Lotfi performs John Burnside's "Prayer" in a film directed by Savannah Acquah, from a new series from the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation & the Writers’ Mosaic
From the Scottish Poetry Library archives: poet & novelist John Burnside discusses fellow Scottish poet W.S. Graham. During the talk, recorded at the National Library of Scotland, Burnside talks about poetry & visual art, the poet as nomad, & “feeding the dead”
https://splpodcast.podbean.com/e/john-burnside-on-ws-graham
#Scottish #literature #poetry #visualart #poets #JohnBurnside #WSGraham
The SPL is pleased to be able to share a treasure from our audio archives: from 2008, a talk by poet and novelist John Burnside on fellow Scottish poet W.S. Graham. During the talk, recorded at the National Library of Scotland before an audience, Burnside talks about poetry and visual art, the poet as nomad and ‘feeding the dead’.
Had I been less prepared, I would have left
in springtime, when the plum tree in the yard
was still in bloom,
the windows open after months of snow,
one magpie in the road
and then another…
—John Burnside, “The Night Ferry”
published in the London Review of Books, December 2020
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n24/john-burnside/the-night-ferry
Assoc for Scottish Literature
damian entwistle
