The Empire of Forgetting by John Burnside
Poetry Book Society Recommendation Autumn 2025
Jonathan Cape
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 and the seven ages. Here, as always, there is a clear-eyed curiosity; a sense of wonder at the beleaguered natural world and its endless mutability "its hidden beauty, often suddenly disclosed "and a deep faith in its old gods. Burnside was always as much a spirit-guide as a poet, and here, in the Empire of Forgetting, we are never far from a fresh alertness to the world, to epiphany "a sudden, spiritual manifestation. There is a sense, too, in these last poems, of a man having found a 'dwelling place' "a sense of rest and peace and settlement with the world. A state of grace. 'Among the best writers of his generation, fully voiced and perfectly pitched… He now leaves behind a body of work that will only grow stronger as new generations discover it' ANDREW O'HAGAN 'A titan of literature…. His passing leaves a gap not only in our literature, but in our ability to exist in the world. He increased the possible ways of our being' KATHLEEN JAMIE
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