“He was someone who had to live alone, someone who found it difficult to be with others for any length of time, because he only had one mode - that discreet art of withdrawal which had, no doubt, taken him… — 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
