John Burnside

FRSL The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

(born 19 March 1955) is a Scottish writer. He is one of only three poets (the others being Ted Hughes and Sean O'Brien) to have won both the

T. S. Eliot Prize The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is a prize that was, for many years, awarded by the Poetry Book Society (UK) to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Priz ...

and the Forward Poetry Prize for the same book (''Black Cat Bone'').

Life and works

Burnside was born in

Dunfermline Dunfermline (; sco, Dunfaurlin, gd, Dùn Phàrlain) is a city, parish and former Royal Burgh, in Fife, Scotland, on high ground from the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. The city currently has an estimated population of 58,508. Accord ...

and raised in Cowdenbeath and Corby. He studied English and European Thought and Literature at Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. A former computer software engineer, he has been a freelance writer since 1996. He is a former Writer in Residence at the University of Dundee and is now Professor in Creative Writing at St Andrews University, where he teaches creative writing, literature and ecology and American poetry. His first collection of poetry, ''The Hoop'', was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Other poetry collections include ''Common Knowledge'' (1991), ''Feast Days'' (1992), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and ''The Asylum Dance'' (2000), winner of the

Whitbread Poetry Award The Costa Book Awards were a set of annual literary awards recognising English-language books by writers based in UK and Ireland. Originally named the Whitbread Book Awards from 1971 to 2005 after its first sponsor, the Whitbread company, then ...

and shortlisted for both the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the

. ''The Light Trap'' (2001) was also shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. His 2011 collection, ''Black Cat Bone'', was awarded The Forward Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. Burnside is also the author of two collections of short stories, ''Burning Elvis'' (2000), and ''Something Like Happy '' (2013), as well as several novels, including ''The Dumb House'' (1997), ''The Devil's Footprints'', (2007), ''Glister'', (2009) and ''A Summer of Drowning'', (2011). His multi-award winning memoir, ''A Lie About My Father'', was published in 2006 and its successor ''Waking Up In Toytown'', in 2010. A further memoir, ''I Put A Spell On You'' combined personal history with reflections on romantic love, magic and popular music. His short stories and feature essays have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including '' The New Yorker'', '' The Guardian'' and '' The London Review of Books'', among others. He also writes an occasional nature column for '' New Statesman''. In 2011 he received the Petrarca-Preis, a major German international literary prize. Burnside's work is inspired by his engagement with nature, environment and

deep ecology Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, and the restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas. Deep ecolo ...

. His collection of short stories,
Something Like Happy
', was published in 2013. He is a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...

(elected in 1999) and in March 2016 was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

, Scotland's National Academy for science and letters. He also lectures annually and oversees the judging of the writing prize at

The Alpine Fellowship The Alpine Fellowship is a charitable foundation that supports, commissions and showcases artists, writers, academics and playwrights. It was founded in 2013 by artist Alan J Lawson and Jacob Burda. The Symposium The focal point of activities ...

Awards

*1988 Scottish Arts Council Book Award, for ''The Hoop'' *1991 Scottish Arts Council Book Award, for ''Common Knowledge'' *1994 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, for ''Feast Days'' *1999 Encore Award for ''The Mercy Boys'' *2000 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection – shortlist), for ''The Asylum Dance'' *2000

(shortlist), for ''The Asylum Dance'' *2000 Whitbread Book Award, Poetry Award, for ''The Asylum Dance'' *2002 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award (shortlist), for ''The Light Trap'' *2002

(shortlist), for ''The Light Trap'' *2005 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Collection - shortlist), for ''The Good Neighbour'' *2006 Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award for ''A Lie About My Father'' *2008 Cholmondeley Award *2011 Petrarca-Preis *2011 PEN/Ackerley prize (shortlist) for ''Waking Up in Toytown'' *2011 Corine Literature Prize for ''A Lie About My Father'' *2011 Forward Prize for ''Black Cat Bone'' *2011 Costa Book Awards (Novel), shortlist, ''A Summer of Drowning'' *2011

for ''Black Cat Bone'' *2012: Spycher: Literaturpreis Leuk with Judith Schalansky *2017: Hörspiel des Jahres für Coldhaven, translation. composition and directing: Klaus Buhlert (SWR) *2018:

Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden The Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden (War Blinded Audio Play Prize), also known as the Kriegsblindenpreis (War Blinded Prize) is the most important literary prize granted to playwrights of audio plays written in the German language. The award was ...

für Coldhaven. translation. composition and directing: Klaus Buhlert (SWR)

Bibliography

Poetry collections

* ''The Hoop'' (Carcanet, 1988) * ''Common Knowledge'' (Secker and Warburg, London, 1991) * ''Feast Days'' (Secker and Warburg, London, 1992) * ''The Myth of the Twin'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 1994) * ''Swimming in the Flood'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 1995) * ''Penguin Modern Poets'' (Penguin, 1996) * ''A Normal Skin'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 1997) * ''The Asylum Dance'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 2000) * ''The Light Trap'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 2002) * ''

A Poet's Polemic ''A Poet's Polemic'' is a 2003 collection of poetry written by Scottish poet John Burnside John Burnside FRSL FRSE (born 19 March 1955) is a Scottish writer. He is one of only three poets (the others being Ted Hughes and Sean O'Brien) to have ...

'' (2003) * ''The Good Neighbour'' (Jonathan Cape, 2005) * ''Selected Poems'' (Jonathan Cape, 2006) * ''Gift Songs'' (Jonathan Cape, 2007) * ''The Hunt in the Forest'' (Jonathan Cape, 2009) * ''Black Cat Bone'' (Jonathan Cape, 2011) * ''All One Breath'' (Jonathan Cape, 2014) * ''Still Life with Feeding Snake'' (Jonathan Cape, 2017) * ''In the Name of the Bee/ Im Namen der Biene'' (Golden Luft, Mainz 2018) * ''Learning to Sleep'' (Jonathan Cape, 2021) *
Apostasy
' (Dare-Gale Press, 2022)

Fiction

* ''The Dumb House'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 1997) * ''The Mercy Boys'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 1999) * ''Burning Elvis'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 2000) * ''The Locust Room'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 2001) * ''Living Nowhere'' (Jonathan Cape, London, 2003) * ''The Devil's Footprints'' (Jonathan Cape, 2007) * ''The Glister'' (Jonathan Cape, 2008) * ''A Summer of Drowning'' (Jonathan Cape, 2011) * ''Something Like Happy'' (Jonathan Cape, 2013) * ''Ashland & Vine'' (Jonathan Cape, 2017) * ''Havergey'' (Little Toller, 2017)

Non-Fiction

* ''Wild Reckoning'' (Gulbenkian, 2004), joint editor with Maurice Riordan of this anthology of ecology-related poems * ''A Lie About My Father'' (Biography, 2006) * ''Wallace Stevens : poems / selected by John Burnside'' (Poet to Poet Series, Faber and Faber, 2008) *''Waking up in Toytown'' (Biography, Jonathan Cape, 2010) * ''I Put a Spell on You'' (Biography, Jonathan Cape, 2014) * * ''The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century'' (Literary Criticism, 2019) * ''Aurochs and Auks: Essays on mortality and extinction'' (Little Toller Books, 2021)

Screen

* ''

Dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing g ...

'' (with

A. L. Kennedy Alison Louise Kennedy (born 22 October 1965) is a Scottish writer, academic and stand-up comedian. She writes novels, short stories and non-fiction, and is known for her dark tone and her blending of realism and fantasy. She contributes columns ...

), a series for television, produced by Cité-Amérique, Canada

Critical studies and reviews of Burnside's work

*'Dwelling Places : An Appreciation of John Burnside', special edition of ''Agenda Magazine,'' Vol 45 No 4/Vol 46 No 1, Spring/Summer 2011 * Review of ''All one breath''.

Footnotes

External links

Short essay in November 2011 issue of The New Humanist

John Burnside at The New Statesman

Profile at the Poetry Archive

Profile at the British Council

Guardian profile and article listing

Scottish Arts Council September 2004 Poem of the Month
: " hommage to Kåre Kivijärvi"
Biography on the Scottish Poetry Library website, with recordings of him reading his poems, and links to poem texts

What We (non)Believe: Reading Poems by Charles Wright, John Burnside, and Kevin Hart
from ''Cordite Poetry Review'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Burnside, John 1955 births Living people Academics of the University of St Andrews Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature British columnists Alumni of Anglia Ruskin University People from Cowdenbeath People from Corby 20th-century Scottish poets 21st-century Scottish poets 21st-century British male writers Scottish male poets Poets associated with Dundee People associated with the University of Dundee Writers of Gothic fiction 20th-century British male writers T. S. Eliot Prize winners