Driftwork

John Burnside

£16.00

We send all orders via Royal Mail: within the UK, choose from 1st Class, 2nd Class or Special Delivery; for the rest of the world, International Standard or International Tracked. Delivery and packaging charges are calculated automatically at the checkout.

To collect orders in person from the Bookshop, choose Click and Collect at the checkout.


Jonathan Cape
20 August 2026
ISBN: 9781787336667
Hardback
240 pages

From the publisher

The definitive selection of John Burnside‘s extraordinary and vibrant poems, taken from across decades but always stirring, curious, alert to the natural world and the people in it.

Over thirty-five years and seventeen collections, John Burnside built a body of poetry that was consistently luminous, original and profound, always in thrall to the glamourie – a magical, fleeting enchantment – always in search of settlement, harmony and grace. His work is both intimately personal and universal, often moving through stages of vulnerability, turbulence, terror, and desire, to artistic positions that are sensitive and highly alert. He risked much for his art and its integrity, in order to arrive at a new and unique understanding of beauty and truth – and to offer a fresh angle from which to view the world, through nature, myth, and magic.

For him, every poem was an alchemical transformation, a metamorphosis, an epiphany.