John Burnside
John Burnside
John Burnsideis a Scottish writer, born in Dunfermline. He is one of only two poetsto have won both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth19 March 1955
decidedly handful knew mining native saw sunday town trips urban
The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I was decidedly urban and knew little about native fauna, other than the handful of birds I saw on trips to the beach or Sunday walks.
beauty debatable girl love possessed sly though
Sometimes, though only in my most unguarded moments, I can still think of Annette Winters as my first love. At fifteen, she was tall, slender, very dark: an intelligent, sly girl possessed of what I think of now, though I didn't think of then, as a kind of debatable beauty.
art bird
Sadly, bird illustration has always been an under-appreciated art.
danger entered might offered wild wisdom
The woods were a boon; all too often, the forest offered danger and mystery. Yet it could be liberating. If you entered that wild place on its own terms, you might be accorded wisdom.
announcing found
One day I was talking about what I was going to do next, and just found myself announcing it: 'I'm going to write a book about my father.'
best looked threw
'Moby-Dick' really threw me. I read it when I was 14 and my best friends were books. It changed the way I looked at the world.
book car copies destroy tried
My first book was a car crash. I tried to find all the copies and destroy them.
finest offers robin
My editor, Robin Robertson, is one of this country's finest poets, so I listen to him when he offers advice.
almost fearful later proportion saw tough
My father was this big, tough guy, almost heroic in proportion to me as a child. It was only later that I saw how fearful he was.
painted
Many of the birds Audubon painted are now extinct, and still we go on killing them, more or less casually, with our pesticides and wires and machinery.
fourth novels
My second, third and fourth novels were mistakes, essentially.
objects seen
One of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen was a Yupik wolf mask, made in Nunivak in around 1890.
ask fine people truth understand
People will occasionally ask me if I understand what it's like to be lonely. And the truth is I don't, because for me, solitariness is a blessing, a gift. Me, I get on fine with myself.
albeit bound cultivate demanding gardens human obliged painfully period realm separation time until
The conventional, and painfully artificial, separation of the human realm from the natural other is bound to perish, albeit over a period of time, until we are obliged to learn how to cultivate our gardens under the most demanding conditions.