John Burnside


John Burnside was a Scottish writer. He was one of four poets to have won the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize for a single book – in this case, for Black Cat Bone in 2011. In 2023, he won the David Cohen Prize in recognition of his full body of work.

Life and works

Burnside was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, 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 was a freelance writer after 1996. He was a former Writer in Residence at the University of Dundee and was Professor in Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews, where he taught 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 by Burnside include Common Knowledge, Feast Days, winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and The Asylum Dance, winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the Forward Poetry Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize. The Light Trap was also shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Burnside was also the author of two collections of short stories, Burning Elvis, and Something Like Happy , as well as several novels, including The Dumb House, The Devil's Footprints,, Glister, and A Summer of Drowning,. His multi-award winning memoir, A Lie About My Father, was published in 2006 and its successor, Waking up in Toytown, in 2010. A Lie About My Father earned him the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year in 2006, alongside the Sundial Scottish Arts Council Non-fiction Book of the Year and the CORINE International Literature Prize. In 2008 he won the Cholmondeley Award. 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 wrote an occasional nature column for the New Statesman. In 2011 he received the Petrarca-Preis, a major German international literary prize.
Burnside's work was inspired by his engagement with nature, environment and deep ecology. His collection of short stories, Something Like Happy, was published in 2013.
Burnside was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in March 2016 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy for science and letters.
He also lectured annually and oversaw the judging of the writing prize at the Alpine Fellowship.
Burnside died after a short illness on 29 May 2024, at the age of 69.

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, for The Asylum Dance
  • 2000: T. S. Eliot Prize, for The Asylum Dance
  • 2000: Whitbread Book Award, Poetry Award, for The Asylum Dance
  • 2002: Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award, for The Light Trap
  • 2002: T. S. Eliot Prize, for The Light Trap
  • 2005: Forward Poetry Prize, 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: Forward Prize for Black Cat Bone
  • 2011: T. S. Eliot Prize for Black Cat Bone
  • 2011: Corine Literature Prize for A Lie About My Father
  • 2011: Costa Book AwardsNovel, shortlist, A Summer of Drowning
  • 2011: PEN/Ackerley Prize for Waking Up in Toytown
  • 2012: Spycher: Literaturpreis Leuk with Judith Schalansky
  • 2013: Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award for Something Like Happy
  • 2017: Hörspiel des Jahres für Coldhaven, translation. composition and directing: Klaus Buhlert
  • 2018: Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden für Coldhaven. translation. composition and directing: Klaus Buhlert
  • 2022: Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets for Apostasy
  • 2023: David Cohen Prize

    Poetry collections

  • The Hoop
  • Common Knowledge
  • Feast Days
  • The Myth of the Twin
  • Swimming in the Flood
  • Penguin Modern Poets
  • A Normal Skin
  • The Asylum Dance
  • The Light Trap
  • A Poet's Polemic
  • The Good Neighbour
  • Selected Poems
  • Gift Songs
  • The Hunt in the Forest
  • Black Cat Bone
  • All One Breath
  • Still Life with Feeding Snake
  • In the Name of the Bee/Im Namen der Biene
  • Learning to Sleep
  • Apostasy
  • Apostasy/Apostasie
  • Ruin, Blossom
  • ''The Empire of Forgetting''

    Fiction

  • The Dumb House
  • The Mercy Boys
  • Burning Elvis
  • The Locust Room
  • Living Nowhere
  • The Devil's Footprints
  • Glister
  • A Summer of Drowning
  • Something Like Happy
  • Ashland & Vine
  • ''Havergey''

    Non-fiction

  • Wild Reckoning, joint editor with Maurice Riordan of this anthology of ecology-related poems
  • A Lie About My Father
  • Wallace Stevens : poems / selected by John Burnside
  • Waking up in Toytown
  • I Put a Spell on You
  • The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century
  • ''Aurochs and Auks: Essays on mortality and extinction''

    Screen

  • Dice, a series for television, produced by Cité-Amérique, Canada

    Critical studies

  • John Burnside: Contemporary Critical Perspectives.
  • "Dwelling Places: An Appreciation of John Burnside", special edition of Agenda magazine, Vol. 45, No 4/Vol. 46, No 1, Spring/Summer 2011

    Profiles

  • at the British Council
  • at the Poetry Archive
  • at Poetry Foundation
  • at the Scottish Poetry Library, with recordings of him reading his poems and links to poem texts

    Magazines and publishers

  • at The Guardian
  • at London Review of Books
  • at New Statesman
  • at Penguin UK

    Poems and essays

  • – a short essay in November 2011 issue of the New Humanist
  • in the Spring 2007 issue of Tate etc. magazine
  • : "homage to Kåre Kivijärvi"
Category:1955 births
Category:2024 deaths
Category:20th-century Scottish male writers
Category:20th-century Scottish poets
Category:21st-century British male writers
Category:21st-century Scottish poets
Category:21st-century Scottish male writers
Category:Academics of the University of St Andrews
Category:Alumni of Anglia Ruskin University
Category:British columnists
Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Category:People associated with the University of Dundee
Category:People from Corby
Category:People from Cowdenbeath
Category:Scottish male poets
Category:T. S. Eliot Prize winners
Category:Writers of Gothic fiction