Scottish - Writer | March 19, 1955 -
Sometimes, though only in my most unguarded moments, I can still think of Annette Winters as my first love. At fifteen, she was tall, slender, very dark: an intelligent, sly girl possessed of what I think of now, though I didn't think of then, as a kind of debatable beauty.
John Burnside
LoveBeautyGirlThinkMomentsDark
With human beings it could be argued that all music-making is, in essence, grounded in improvisation.
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The only pleasure in redecorating or moving house comes from stumbling across books that I'd almost forgotten I owned.
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Irrationality interests me more than anything: sometimes it's very dangerous, but it can be incredibly beautiful.
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A man was defined, in my father's circles, by what he could bear, the pain he could shrug off, the warmth or comfort he could deny himself.
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One day I was talking about what I was going to do next, and just found myself announcing it: 'I'm going to write a book about my father.'
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My first book was a car crash. I tried to find all the copies and destroy them.
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What makes me write is the rhythm of the world around me - the rhythms of the language, of course, but also of the land, the wind, the sky, other lives. Before the words comes the rhythm - that seems to me to be of the essence.
SkyWordsMeWindWorldLanguage
The poem builds in my mind and sits there, as if in a register, until the poem, or a piece of a longer poem, is finished enough to write down. I can hold several lines in my head for quite some time, but as soon as they are written down, the register clears, as it were, and I have to work with what is on the paper.
WorkTimeMindEnoughDownI Can
My editor, Robin Robertson, is one of this country's finest poets, so I listen to him when he offers advice.
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Poetry stands or falls by its music.
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Every time I write a book, I think how I could be doing it better to please people - a nicer book with nicer characters - but I just can't.
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