I always wanted to be a painter. I loved painting. I went on three different art courses but had no talent whatsoever. — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
'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 Image
