John Burnside

(born March 1955 -) - Dunfermline, Fife

John Burnside

Born in the Fife town of Dunfermline, poet and novelist John Burnside worked as a computer software engineer before turning to freelance writing in 1996. He is now a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of St Andrews.

Known primarily for his poetry, including The Asylum Dance, which won the Whitbread Poetry award in 2001. He has also written a short story collection, Burning Elvis, and three novels. His novels are powerful tales of masculinity and male sexuality - The Locust Room explores the consequences of a series of violent rapes. John Burnside's biographical memoir of his childhood in Cowdenbeath, called A Lie About My Father, won the 2006 Saltire Society Book of the Year Award. His most recent novel is The Devil's Footprints.

Key titles

  • Cover scan of The Asylum Dance
    £8.00
    The Asylum Dance - Paperback
    John Burnside's seventh collection of poems explores the tension between the sanctuary of home and the lure of escape, his vision of a domestic world threaded through with myth and longing.
  • Cover scan of The Devil's Footprints
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    The Devil's Footprints: A Romance - Paperback
    Once, on a winter's night many years ago, after a heavy snow, the devil passed through the Scottish fishing town of Coldhaven, leaving a trail of dark hoofprints across the streets and roofs of the sleeping town. Michael Gardiner has lived in Coldhaven all his life, but still feels like an outsider, a blow-in. But that is about to change.
  • Cover scan of The Devil's Footprints
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    The Devil's Footprints: A Romance - Hardback
    Once, on a winter's night many years ago, after a heavy snow, the devil passed through the Scottish fishing town of Coldhaven, leaving a trail of dark hoofprints across the streets and roofs of the sleeping town. Michael Gardiner has lived in Coldhaven all his life, but still feels like an outsider, a blow-in. But that is about to change.
  • Cover scan of Gift Songs
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    Gift Songs - Paperback
    In his tenth collection of poems, John Burnside begins with an interrogation of the gift song and moves on through explorations of time and place, towards a tentative and idiosyncratic re-ligere, the beginnings of a renewal of the connection to, and faith in, an ordered world.
  • Cover scan of Glister
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    Glister - Hardback
    The children of Homeland exist in a state of suspended terror. Every year or so, a boy from their school disappears, vanishing into the wasteland of the old chemical plant. Nobody knows where the boys go, or if they are still alive. The town policeman was involved in the cover-up of one boy's murder, and is determined to find the killer.
  • Cover scan of The Good Neighbour
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    The Good Neighbour - Paperback
    The question of how we live together sits at the heart of this, John Burnside's ninth collection of poetry.
  • Cover scan of The Hoop
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    The Hoop - Paperback
    This is John Burnside's first collection of poems and it won him a Scottish Arts Council book award in 1988.
  • Cover scan of A Lie About My Father
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    A Lie About My Father - Hardback
    This book presents a story about forgiving but not forgetting, about examining the way men are made & how they fall apart, about understanding that in order to have a good son you must have a good father. The author's honesty, thinking & images of beauty & fracture combine to create a moving memoir of two lost men: a father & his child.
  • Cover scan of Living Nowhere
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    Living Nowhere - Paperback
    Brilliantly evoking the turned-on, tuned-out seventies, with LSD the vehicle to reinvention, 'Living Nowhere' is a story of friendship and loss, about trying to make a pure connection with the earth through a miasma of contamination.
  • Cover scan of The Locust Room
    £7.99
    The Locust Room - Paperback
    A photographer is forced to examine his relations with women, other men and with his family. Over one summer, he becomes involved in a series of sexual intrigues and acts of subtle violence, as he journeys towards self-definition.

Bibliography