John Burnside : (5)

" I remember when I first encountered anthropocentrism. I was in primary school and, in preparation for our confirmation, the class was learning about the afterlife. " - John Burnside

" The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisation that the essential virtues – compassion, wonder, humility, respect for the mysterious – are far from conventionally heroic. " - John Burnside

" With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation. " - John Burnside

" My poems tend to be more celebratory and lyrical, and the novels so far pretty dark. Poetry doesn’t seem to me to be an appropriate tool for exploring that. " - John Burnside

" It is common knowledge now that we depend on insects for our continued existence; that, without key pollinators, the human population would collapse in less than a decade. " - John Burnside