Selected Poems

If genius is operating anywhere in English poetry at present, I feel it is here, in Burnside's singular music

Adam Thorpe, Observer

A stunningly good writer of poetry and fiction

Independent

One of the most outstandingly gifted poets in Britain. He, like one of his subjects, is 'turned into the plainsong of the stars'

Scotsman

Burnside has a stillness and emotional restraint, a respect for the observer and observed alike which is serious, exemplary and rare

Times Literary Supplement

I love the way John Burnside looks at the world. He doesn't just look: he watches. He sees into the secret spaces that lie somewhere between the hidden and the revealed... [He] crafts a poetry as precise in its detail, as subtle in its perceptions, as respectful in its attentions as the blade of a brain surgeon's scalpel

Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times