The Empire of Forgetting

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.