As I child, I came to this idea with a horrified fascination. Once upon a time, I wasn’t here. Before that, my… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that whereof we… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
“He lied all the time even when there was no need to lie [...] He needed a _history_, a sense of self.… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
“All you have to do is choose the right day, the right weather, and you come upon a hidden place in the… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
A modern arboretum brings us that ancient forest and, with it, a changed apprehension of time, a renewed appreciation of the elegance… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
Sometimes, though only in my most unguarded moments, I can still think of Annette Winters as my first love. At fifteen, she… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
My father was one of those men who sit in a room and you can feel it: the simmer, the sense of… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
“He was someone who had to live alone, someone who found it difficult to be with others for any length of time,… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
and because what we learn in the dark remains all our lives, a noise like the sea, displacing the day's pale knowledge,… — John Burnside Copy Share Image
In many traditions, hawks are sacred: Apollo's messengers for the Greeks, sun symbols for the ancient Egyptians and, in the case of the Lakota… — John Burnside Copy Share
The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a longer poem,… — John Burnside Copy Share
Usually, I would mistrust a book if it took that long to write. Usually, if it isn't done in two years, I suspect there's… — John Burnside Copy Share
This is a truth that should be repeated like a mantra: to have any chance of a ful - filling life, we require not… — John Burnside Copy Share
My father was one of those men who sit in a room and you can feel it: the simmer, the sense of some unpredictable… — John Burnside Copy Share
“There are days when that dark face is something I can think of as a friend – a primal energy that carries me forward… — John Burnside Copy Share
I remember how, back in the 1980s, the Scottish Flow Country became an object of bemused controversy as rich celebrities and businessmen from south… — John Burnside Copy Share
The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisation that the essential virtues - compassion,… — John Burnside Copy Share
I remember a nightfall from childhood, far from home and off the known track: I'd been walking with some older boys, but they ran… — John Burnside Copy Share
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… — John Burnside Copy Share
'The Asylum Dance' was written after I'd moved back to Scotland and was a response to moving to my old home area of Fife. — John Burnside Copy Share
I have never understood why so many gardeners favour straight lines and narrow, regulated borders; perhaps they think wildness could work only in a… — John Burnside Copy Share
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,… — John Burnside Copy Share
“Everything stayed hidden […] it was all secret – known by anyone who cared to know, but unacknowledged, like a priest’s feverish brightness around… — John Burnside Copy Share
![“He lied all the time even when there was no need to lie [...] He needed a _history_, a sense of self. [Burnside on his father, p. 22]” quote by John Burnside](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/595/john-burnside-8167_family_he-lied-all-the-time-even-when-there-was_968987.jpg)
![“My father was one of those men who sit in a room and you can feel it: the simmer, the sense of some unpredictable force that might, at any moment, break loose, and do something terrible. [Burnside, p. 27]” quote by John Burnside](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/672/john-burnside-8167_break_my-father-was-one-of-those-men-who-sit-i_167810.jpg)
