“What makes me write is the rhythm
of the world around me - the rhythms of the language, of course, but also of
the land, the wind, the sky, other lives. Before the words comes the rhythm -
that seems to me to be of the essence.” – John
Burnside
Born in Scotland on this date in
1955, Burnside is one of only four writers to win both the T. S. Eliot Prize
and the Forward Poetry Prize for a single book – his being 2011’s Black
Cat Bone. He also won a Whitbread Award for The Asylum
Dance in 2000, and The David Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement in
2023. He died after a short illness in May
of 2024 just after publishing his 22nd book of poetry, Ruin,
Blossom.
A longtime Professor in Creative
Writing at St Andrews University, Burnside also authored many short
stories, novels, essays, and two multi-award-winning memoirs, A Lie
About My Father and Waking Up In Toytown.
“I love long sentences,” he said about
his writing style. “My big heroes of fiction writing are Henry James
and (Marcel) Proust – people who recognize that life doesn't consist of
declarative statements, but rather modifications, qualifications and feelings.”
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