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
objects seen
One of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen was a Yupik wolf mask, made in Nunivak in around 1890.
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.
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.
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.
art bird
Sadly, bird illustration has always been an under-appreciated art.
ancestors gathered
Our ancestors went to the woods to find fuel; they set snares there for birds and gathered nuts and fungi.
either far interest keeping mainly poets spanish touch websites work
The way I mainly use the Internet is keeping in touch with poets that live far away. My main interest is contemporary American poets and some Spanish language poets, and I keep in touch with their work through either their websites or email.
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.
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.
area aside belonged dates deer fit hunt larger masters meant norman violent word
A forest - the word dates back to the Norman occupancy, when it meant an area set aside for England's violent new masters to hunt boar and deer - is necessarily larger than a wood. It belonged to the king and was a fit place for his recreation.
The older I get, the happier my childhood becomes.
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.'
atmosphere birds books creating emotional great narrative played
As a child, I read a great many books in which animals and birds played significant roles, not only in the narrative itself, but also in creating the emotional and psychological atmosphere of that narrative - the imaginative furniture, as it were, in which any story unfolds.