John Burnside was among the most acclaimed writers of his generation. His novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs won numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and, in 2023, he received the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 2011 Black Cat Bone won both the Forward and the T.S. Eliot Prizes for poetry. He died in 2024.
For my money, John Burnside is by far the best British poet
alive
*Spectator*
A master of language
*Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall*
The joy of Burnside's poems - and part of what makes them moving -
is that he never stops registering the ways in which beauty makes
life worth living
*Observer*
Burnside wrestles with hugeness in a way that few writers dare to
do
*Ali Smith, author of Autumn*
Sadly Burnside’s final collection before his death…Ruin, Blossom
embraces transition and the fleeting, fading, but ultimately
renewing nature of all things. His characteristically astute,
finely observed lines find the redeeming light in a challenged
natural world
*Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2024**
One of the most gifted poets writing today
*Times Literary Supplement*
Burnside has a lovely garrulousness that is distinctively his
own
*Tessa Hadley, author of Free Love*
John Burnside is a genius... He is constantly alive to alternative
possibilities and versions of himself, as close yet unreachable as
his own shadow. His responses to the world are so raw, it's as if
he's missing a skin - or perhaps the rest of us have grown hides to
make life manageable
*Intelligent Life*
A musician and chromaticist, he is a poet whose rapt, floating
verse conjures up effects of great beauty in both the ear and
imagination
*Fiona Sampson, author of In Search of Mary Shelley*
John Burnside was one of the finest poets of his generation, and
with his death in May, we find poetry much the poorer… Burnside’s
sharp, suturing language allows us to know the world as it is:
ragged and broken, yet full of impossibly fragile beauty
*Guardian*
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