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Driftwork
Selected Poems
Brief Description
Driftwork is the definitive selection of John Burnside's extraordinary and vibrant poems, from one of our greatest contemporary writers. This collection brings together John Burnside's extraordinary and vibrant poems, taken from across decades. His work is always stirring, curious, and alert to the natural world and...
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Description
Driftwork is the definitive selection of John Burnside's extraordinary and vibrant poems, from one of our greatest contemporary writers.
This collection brings together John Burnside's extraordinary and vibrant poems, taken from across decades. His work is always stirring, curious, and 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 has built a body of poetry that is consistently luminous, original, and profound. His poems are always in thrall to the glamourie – a magical, fleeting enchantment – and constantly 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, arriving at sensitive and highly alert artistic positions. He risked much for his art and its integrity, seeking a new and unique understanding of beauty and truth, offering 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 Tamas
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781787336667
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 20 August 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Jonathan Cape
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 23.0mm
Width: 139.0mm
Height: 206.0mm
Weight: 304g
Pages: 240
About the Author
John Burnside was among the most acclaimed writers of his generation. His novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs won numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and, in 2023, he received the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 2011 Black Cat Bone won both the Forward and the T.S. Eliot Prizes for poetry. He died in 2024.
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A Lie About My Father
John Burnside recalls the failed relationship with his father, in the first of his trilogy of exquisite memoirs - with a new introduction by Megan Nolan. A Lie About My Father 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...Paperback$3000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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I Put a Spell on You is the last of John Burnside's three memoirs, an enthralling ode to love and wonder in all its forms, featuring a new introduction by Sean Hewitt. John Burnside first heard the song 'I Put a Spell on You' and was immediately captivated. The song's enchantment and fascination soon turned to obsession, offering intrigue through...Paperback$3000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
The Empire of Forgetting
John Burnside's last collection of new poems gathers around a single theme—mortality—to create a powerfully moving exploration of memory, forgetting, and the seven ages. 'A master of language' HILARY MANTEL John Burnside's last collection of new poems gathers around a single theme—mortality—and draws on his faltering health and earlier glances with death, creating a powerfully moving exploration of memory, forgetting,...Paperback$3800Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
Waking Up in Toytown
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'Hagan In the early 80s, after a decade of drug abuse and borderline mental illness, John Burnside resolved to escape...Paperback$3000Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
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