On the poetry of John Burnside

I am a member of ‘The Poetic Licence’ on Patreon. Our leader, Jo Bell, suggested we might try confining our poetry reading to just one poet for a month or so and consider such things as their style, obsessions, changes over time etc., Below is a summary of my findings from this enriching experience.

ON JOHN BURNSIDE

I found my deep dive into the poetry of John Burnside enriching yet it began sadly just after his death aged 67 on May 29th. I chose John because I was already attracted by his love of nature, sense of wonder and intrigued by his challenging philosophical musings. Here are a few findings:

I carefully read four collections from cover to cover: ‘The Light Trap’ (2002); ‘All One Breath’ (2014); ‘Learning to Sleep’ (2021); ‘Ruin, Blossom’ (2024). All are written in free verse. There are no prose poems; he seemed to confined his prose to his novels, biographies and essays. Each collection was divided into 3-4 sections and contained sequences of poems ranging from two to nine parts. I also did a basic statistical analysis on them. Over the four collections, 25% were single stanzas, 28% were couplets, 10% tercets, 4% quatrains and the rest had stanzas longer than four lines; 9% have irregular length stanzas. Regarding page length: 59% occupied a single page; 29% two pages; 10% three pages; 12% more than three pages.

From each collection I close read two or three poems using the scheme from Anna Cathenka’s ‘National Centre for Writing’ online course, ‘How to be a confident poet’, in order to get further insight into John’s craft and obsessions. Going deep into one poem was very moving.

Craftwise: 

1 He was very consistent over the collections favouring the forms noted above although his final collection was shorter at about 60 pages compared to his usual 80 pages and most of the poems were one page - perhaps this is because of his failing health. 

2 A lot of his single stanza poems are 14 lines; some are one stanza and very sonnet-like with the lines close to pentameter/ten syllables though not end-rhymed but they have a turn. He often splits his favoured 14 lines into couplets or variations like 8/6; 6/8, 4/6/4 using a variety of line breaks mainly enjambment and indentation, often deeply. 

3 Some minor details: all of his poem titles are capitalised and I don’t recall any use of reported speech.

Contentwise, I gained a deeper feel for and understanding of his obsessions:

1 His poems are dense yet tender and subtlety and quietly lyrical and usually require multiple readings including out loud, but are worth the reward.

2 he wrestled with words when he mused upon that which is beyond words yet he had a very strong sense of a presence - the invisible amongst the visible. He does not provide answers to questions raised, preferring the reader to make their own conclusions. 

3 He had a great love of the natural world and used that to ground his often hard to grasp, sometimes impenetrable, musings. Thus he balances clarity and mystery within poems to engage the reader.

4 He explored the influence of the outer landscape, especially his working class and troubled childhood, on his inner landscape. For example, his Catholic upbringing was a constant reference point and his loss of faith takes up almost the first half of ‘Ruin, Blossom’. Allusions to the comforts of Daoism also feature (as discussed in his ‘BBC Sounds’ interview with Joan Bakewell).

5 Often the poems require you to reach for the dictionary or to Google for information about matters referred to in the poem or the epigraphs which feature strongly. The use of Catholic jargon is difficult for  a non-Catholic like me. Sometimes foreign language phrases appear without translation which I find annoying - I wonder if he was trying too hard sometimes to be scholarly.  But he was a top poet, much revered in Britain though not so in America (the Poetry Foundation only has two of his poems.)

Here is the final poem in his collection: ‘Ruin, Blossom’ published just weeks before his death. 

A POSTSCRIPT FOR P’ANG YUN 

I was thinking about a sainthood.

Drawing water, listening for rain; 

or splitting wood at first light in the yard: 

the smell of resin, snowmelt in the gravel, 

the axe-blade disappearing through the grain.

(An end-note in the book states: ‘ This poem responds to the well-known saying, attributed to the Chinese sage, P’ang Yun:  ‘How miraculous and wondrous, hauling water and carrying firewood!’)

For me, the poem and saying illustrate how John humbly embraced poetry and life with a sense of privilege, gratitude and wonder. 

A footnote: For more, there are lots of YouTube videos and John read some of his poems for The Poetry Archive.