John Burnside

An engaging invitation to rediscover Henry Miller—and to learn how his anarchist sensibility can help us escape “the air-conditioned nightmare” of the modern worldThe American writer Henry Miller's critical reputation—if not his popular readership—has been in eclipse at least since Kate Millett's blistering critique in Sexual Politics, her landmark 1970 study of misogyny in literature and art. Even a Miller fan like the acclaimed Scottish writer John Burnside finds Miller's "sex books"—including The Rosy Crucifixion, Tropic of Cancer, and Tropic of Capricorn—"boring and embarrassing." But Burnside says that Miller's notorious image as a "pornographer and woman hater" has hidden his vital, true importance—his anarchist sensibility and the way it shows us how, by fleeing from conformity of all kinds, we may be able to save ourselves from the "air-conditioned nightmare" of the modern world.Miller wrote that "there is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy," and in this short, engaging, and personal book, Burnside shows how Miller teaches us to become less adapted to the world, to resist a life sentence to the prison of social, intellectual, emotional, and material conditioning. Exploring the full range of Miller's work, and giving special attention to The Air-Conditioned Nightmare and The Colossus of Maroussi, Burnside shows how, with humor and wisdom, Miller illuminates the misunderstood tradition of anarchist thought. Along the way, Burnside reflects on Rimbaud's enormous influence on Miller, as well as on how Rimbaud and Miller have influenced his own writing.An unconventional and appealing account of an unjustly neglected writer, On Henry Miller restores to us a figure whose searing criticism of the modern world has never been more relevant.

Drawing on various sources, this book examines varieties of love, faith, hope and illusion, to suggest an unusual possibility: that when the search for what we expected to find - in the forest or in our own hearts - ends in failure, we can now begin the hard and disciplined quest for what is actually there.

Tells the story of a lost and damaged world of childhood and the constants of his father's world: men defined by drink they could take and the pain they could stand, men shaped by their guilt and machismo. This book examines the way men are made and how they fall apart, about understanding in order to have a good son you must have a good father.

The definitive selection of John Burnside's extraordinary and vibrant poems, taken from across decades but always stirring, curious, alert to the natural world and the people in it 'It’s impossible not to love the world more when reading Burnside' GUARDIAN Over thirty-five years and seventeen collections, John Burnside built a body of poetry that was consistently luminous, original and profound, always in thrall to the glamourie – a magical, fleeting enchantment – always in search of settlement, harmony and grace. His work is both intimately personal and universal, often moving through stages of vulnerability, turbulence, terror, and desire, to artistic positions that are sensitive and highly alert. He risked much for his art and its integrity, in order to arrive at a new and unique understanding of beauty and truth – and to offer a fresh angle from which to view the world, through nature, myth, and magic. For him, every poem was an alchemical transformation, a metamorphosis, an epiphany. 'Among the best writers of his generation, fully voiced and perfectly pitched' Andrew O'Hagan 'A master of language' Hilary Mantel 'Burnside's sharp, suturing language allows us to know the world as it is: ragged and broken, yet full of impossibly fragile beauty' Rebecca Tamás

John Burnside recalls the failed relationship with his father, in the first of his trilogy of exquisite memoirsWith a new introduction by Megan Nolan‘A master of language’ Hilary MantelHe had his final heart attack in the Silver Band Club in Corby, somewhere between the bar and the cigarette machine. A foundling; a fantasist; a morose, threatening drinker who was quick with his hands, he hadn’t seen his son for years.John Burnside’s extraordinary story of this failed relationship is a beautifully written evocation of a lost and damaged world of childhood and the constants of his father’s world: men defined by the drink they could take and the pain they could stand, men shaped by their guilt and machismo.A Lie About My Father is about forgiving but not forgetting, about examining the way men are made and how they fall apart, and about understanding that in order to have a good son you must have a good father.‘Memoir this good illuminates something larger than itself. It is an exercise in understanding, compassion and forgiveness’ Sunday TelegraphSaltire Scottish Book of the Year and the Scottish Arts Council Non-Fiction Book of the Year

With wit, precision and grace, John Burnside's second memoir traces the aftershocks of a troubled childhood into troubled adulthood.With a new introduction by Sarah Perry‘Among the best writers of his generation, fully voiced and perfectly pitched’ Andrew O’HaganIn the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, John Burnside resolved to escape his addictive personality and find calm in a ‘Surbiton of the mind.’ But the suburbs are not quite as normal as he had imagined, and he relapses into chaos.He encounters a homicidal office worker who is obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock and Petula Clark, an old lover, with whom he reprises a troubled, masochistic relationship and, finally, the seemingly flesh-and-blood embodiments of all his private phantoms, as he drifts further into unreality.The second of John Burnside’s extraordinary trilogy of memoirs, Waking Up in Toytown is the story of one man’s search for sanity – but also the story of love that outgrows its restraints and a scorching enquiry into the soul, from one of our greatest contemporary writers.‘Burnside’s memoir deserves to become a classic. Has anyone written about the direct experience of mental illness with such scrupulous observation and wit?’ Daily Express

The last of John Burnside’s three memoirs, I Put a Spell on You is an enthralling ode to love and wonder in all its forms With a new introduction by Seán Hewitt'A master of language' Hilary MantelThe first time he was played ‘I Put a Spell on You’, John Burnside thought he had never heard a more beautiful song – it was an enchantment, a fascination that would turn to obsession. Implicit in the song were all the ambiguities that intrigued him – love, possession, and danger.In this exquisite and haunting book, John Burnside evokes his coming of age from the industrial misery of Cowdenbeath and Corby to the new world of Cambridge, and follows his drifting thoughts and memories along the way: from uncanny encounters with ‘lost girls’ to digressions on voodoo, acid, and insomnia, alongside a cast that includes Kafka, Narcissus, Diane Arbus and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.The last of John Burnside’s three memoirs, I Put a Spell on You is a memoir of romance – of lost love and the love of being lost – darkened by threat, illuminated by glamour.'Astonishing… Not just brilliant, but essential reading' Independent'Exact and enthralling' Tessa Hadley

This pocket-sized paperback is one of the twenty-four titles published for 2017 Hong Kong International Poetry Nights. The theme of IPHHK2017 is “Ancient Enmity”. IPNHK is one of the most influential international poetry events in Asia. From 22–26 November 2017, over 20 invited poets from various countries will be in Hong Kong to read their works based on the theme “Ancient Enmity.” Included in the anthology and box set, these unique works are presented with Chinese and English translations in bilingual or trilingual formats.

Lucid, lyrical, and intellectually profound: this collection of poems resonates with life and death, but mostly what falls in between: the charmed darkness.Several ghosts haunt Learning to Sleep, from the author's mother, commemorated in an exquisitely charged variant on the pastoral elegy, to the poet Arthur Rimbaud, who wanders an implausible Lincolnshire landscape looking for some sign of belonging. Throughout the book, the powers and dominions of a lost pagan ancestry emerge unexpectedly through the gaps in contemporary life: half-seen and fleeting, but profoundly present. Behind it all, the figure of Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep, marks Burnside's own attempts to come to terms with the severe sleep disorder from which he has suffered for years, a condition that culminated in the recent near-death experience that informs the latter part of the book.Add to this a series of provocative meditations on the ways in which we are all harmed by institutions, from organised religion, or marriage, to the tawdry concepts of gender and romantic love that subtly govern our personal lives, and Learning to Sleep reveals Burnside at his most elegiac, while still retaining a radical pagan's sense of celebration and cultural independence.‘I read it over and over again, marvelling at its concision and beauty.' Cressida Connolly, Spectator** A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021**

A Financial Times Book of the Year Though we might not realise it, our collective memory of the twentieth century was defined by the poets who lived and wrote in it. At every significant turning point we find them, pen in hand, fingers poised at the typewriter, ready to distil the essence of the moment, from the muddy wastes of the Western front to the vast reckoning that came with the end of empire. This is the first and only history of twentieth century poetry, by the acclaimed poet, author and academic John Burnside. Bringing together poets from times and places as diverse as Tsarist Russia, 1960's America and Ireland at the height of the Troubles, The Music of Time reveals how poets engaged with and shaped the most important issues of their times - and were in their turn affected by their context and dialogue with each other. This is a major work of scholarship, that on every page bears witness to the transformative beauty and power of poetry.

A revelatory and deeply personal history of twentieth-century poetry by prize-winning poet and memoirist John Burnside Poetry helps us to make sense of our world, transforming what the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam called the "noise of time" into a kind of music. The Music of Time is a unique history of twentieth-century poetry by one of today's most acclaimed poets, blending incandescent personal meditations with rare insights about a broad range of poets who distilled the essence of the moment, gave voice to our griefs and joys, and shaped our collective memory. Bringing together poets from times and places as diverse as Tsarist Russia, 1960s Harlem, and Ireland at the height of the Troubles, John Burnside reveals how poetry responded to the dramatic events of the century while shaping our impressions of them. He takes readers from the trenches of World War I to a prison cell in Nazi Germany, and from Rilke's grave in the Swiss Alps to Dylan Thomas's Welsh seaside. His luminous narrative is woven through with insights into the poet's creative process as well as lyrical and thought-provoking digressions on topics ranging from marriage to the Kennedy assassination. A spellbinding work of literary history, The Music of Time reveals how poets engaged with the most important issues and events of the twentieth century, and bears personal witness to the beauty and power of an art form unlike any other.

A revelatory and deeply personal history of twentieth-century poetry by prize-winning poet and memoirist John Burnside Poetry helps us to make sense of our world, transforming what the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam called the "noise of time" into a kind of music. The Music of Time is a unique history of twentieth-century poetry by one of today's most acclaimed poets, blending incandescent personal meditations with rare insights about a broad range of poets who distilled the essence of the moment, gave voice to our griefs and joys, and shaped our collective memory. Bringing together poets from times and places as diverse as Tsarist Russia, 1960s Harlem, and Ireland at the height of the Troubles, John Burnside reveals how poetry responded to the dramatic events of the century while shaping our impressions of them. He takes readers from the trenches of World War I to a prison cell in Nazi Germany, and from Rilke's grave in the Swiss Alps to Dylan Thomas's Welsh seaside. His luminous narrative is woven through with insights into the poet's creative process as well as lyrical and thought-provoking digressions on topics ranging from marriage to the Kennedy assassination. A spellbinding work of literary history, The Music of Time reveals how poets engaged with the most important issues and events of the twentieth century, and bears personal witness to the beauty and power of an art form unlike any other.

Kate, a grieving, semi-alcoholic film student, invites an elderly woman to take part in an oral-history documentary. Gradually, Jean offers a heart-breaking account, not only of her own history ââ?¬â?? a lost lover, a family scarred by war ââ?¬â?? but of the American century itself;

Winner of both the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize, Black Cat Bone is the first American publication of the poetry of John BurnsideBefore the songs I sang there were the songsthey came from, patent shredsof Babel, and the secretNineveh of back rooms in the dark. Hour after hourthe night trains blundered throughfrom towns so far away and innocentthat everything I knew seemed fictional: --from "Death Room Blues" John Burnside's Black Cat Bone is full of poems of thwarted love and disappointment, raw desire, the stalking beast. One sequence tells of an obsessive lover coming to grief in echoes of the old murder ballads, and another longer poem describes a hunter losing himself in the woods while pursuing an unknown and possibly unknowable quarry. Black Cat Bone introduces American readers to one of the best poets writing across the Atlantic.