Selected Poems

by John Burnside

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.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2006

About the author

John Burnside was a Scottish writer. He was the author of nine collections of poetry and five works of fiction. Burnside achieved wide critical acclaim, winning the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2000 for The Asylum Dance which was also shortlisted for the Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes. He left Scotland in 1965, returning to settle there in 1995. In the intervening period he worked as a factory hand, a labourer, a gardener and, for ten years, as a computer systems designer. Laterly, he lived in Fife with his wife and children and taught Creative Writing, Literature and Ecology courses at the University of St. Andrews.

[Author photo © Norman McBeath]

Reviews

[Konstantin R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

[rating = B-]

As I was reading this collection, I heard the Burnside had just died. But he has left a great body of work behind, and I hope more readers find him and give him space in their libraries.

Burnside writes very dense poems focused on place (usually rural/countryside). My favorite sections were those in the first third and the last third. The middle poems were very long and more difficult to sink into. They still contained wonderful lines and phrases. However, because of the density of his lines, the poem just seemed harder to get through. Yet that shouldn't deter you.

Like the work of Irish novelist John Banville, there is a beauty and depth that reveals so much when successfully infiltrated. You have to work a bit at times. At other times, the lines themselves are rewarding enough.

[Russio · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection very much about the liminal spaces in which we live our existences - those things half glimpsed or half remembered, the flux of journeys and homecomings, loneliness in amongst one's community. Very erudite, which makes for some effort required, which sometimes I had but sometimes I did not. Some ten page opus's are replete with amazing lines amongst the wash of odd versification and long streams if images,so that concentration is a must. Many standouts, and those that were more experiential I put down to my limits as a reader, rather than JB's as a writer. Very interesting to me as a cognitive enthusiast, in its linkages between person and space.

[Steph De Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, my first foray into Burnside's poetry. His writing is rich, earthy, and sensuous, in a manner that evokes for me the work of both Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes (two other poets I greatly admire). I particularly enjoyed "The Asylum Dance", a spare, haunting poem that I found myself thinking about repeatedly after finishing the collection. I look forward to reading more of Burnside's work in the near future.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

[1]

I've never read a poem where a new

[2]

section begins mid-sentence. I didn't even know

[3]

that was allowed. This simple move by

[4]

Burnside turned my world upside down.

[Ben Doeh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burnside is keen to pierce through our urge to narrate, and to understand what exists beyond the familiar details of ordinary life. Thus he is interested in the pretext and the subverbal; he is inspired by the always elusive property of otherness, and the desire to exist beyond ingrained notions of property in the sense of ownership.
September 11th inspires a poem about the illusions produced by 'History', while in 'Koi' he seeks the ecological world outside of human understanding. 'To the painter Fabritius' is an ode to the lost works of art, and the inherently fragmentary role of human life in a wider ecology.

Much of this selected works consists of poems from 'The Asylum Dance', where he takes a human habitat ('Ports' 'Settlements' 'Roads' 'Fields') and explores how they shape his perspective and, in broader terms, the illusions of us as human beings. It's an interesting project, though not very consistent. Nonetheless it marks a transition from being a good but piecemeal poet, to one who embraces ambitious subject matter while still focused on the quotidian. From here on, he is at his best.

Burnside's poetry is going strong at the moment. Somehow I imagine (a phrase typical of Burnside's locution) posterity will remember him as a minor poet, if at all. But perhaps that's how he desires to be read.