The Empire of Forgetting

John Burnside’s last collection of 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.