Ruin, Blossom
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:11th Apr '24
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A remarkable collection exploring ageing, mortality and environmental destruction
**WINNER OF THE DAVID COHEN PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2023**
'By far the best British poet alive' SPECTATOR
'A master of language' HILARY MANTEL
In this powerful, moving book, John Burnside takes his cue from Schiller, who recognised that, as one thing fades, so another flourishes: everywhere and always, in matters great and small, new life blossoms amongst the ruins.
Here, in poems that explore ageing, mortality, environmental destruction and mental illness, Burnside not only mourns what is lost in passing, but also celebrates the new, and sometimes unexpected, forms that emerge from such losses. An elegy for a dead lover ends with a quiet recognition of everyday beauty – first sun streaming through the trees … a skylark in the near field, flush with song – as the speaker emerges from lockdown after a long illness.
Throughout, the poet attends to the quality of grace – numinous, exquisite, fleeting as an angel’s wing – and the broken tryst between humankind and its spiritual and animal elements, even with itself: the gaunt deer on the roads/like refugees. He acknowledges the inevitability of the fading towards death, but still finds chimes of light in the darkness – insisting that, here and now, even in decline, the world, when given its due attention, is all Annunciation.
*A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT*
For my money, John Burnside is by far the best British poet alive * Spectator *
A master of language -- Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall
The joy of Burnside's poems - and part of what makes them moving - is that he never stops registering the ways in which beauty makes life worth living * Observer *
Burnside wrestles with hugeness in a way that few writers dare to do -- Ali Smith, author of Autumn
Sadly Burnside’s final collection before his death…Ruin, Blossom embraces transition and the fleeting, fading, but ultimately renewing nature of all things. His characteristically astute, finely observed lines find the redeeming light in a challenged natural world * Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2024* *
One of the most gifted poets writing today * Times Literary Supplement *
Burnside has a lovely garrulousness that is distinctively his own -- Tessa Hadley, author of Free Love
John Burnside is a genius... He is constantly alive to alternative possibilities and versions of himself, as close yet unreachable as his own shadow. His responses to the world are so raw, it's as if he's missing a skin - or perhaps the rest of us have grown hides to make life manageable * Intelligent Life *
A musician and chromaticist, he is a poet whose rapt, floating verse conjures up effects of great beauty in both the ear and imagination -- Fiona Sampson, author of In Search of Mary Shelley
John Burnside was one of the finest poets of his generation, and with his death in May, we find poetry much the poorer… Burnside’s sharp, suturing language allows us to know the world as it is: ragged and broken, yet full of impossibly fragile beauty * Guardian *
ISBN: 9781529909258
Dimensions: 197mm x 131mm x 8mm
Weight: 102g
80 pages