The Empire of Forgetting

<b>A powerful exploration of life and death, illness and grace, wonder and beauty, in the posthumous collection from one of our greatest contemporary poets<br><br>'It’s impossible not to love the world more when reading Burnside' <i>GUARDIAN</i><br><br>'A master of language' HILARY MANTEL</b><br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br><b>'Among the best writers of his generation, fully voiced and perfectly pitched’ ANDREW O'HAGAN<br><br>‘A titan of literature' KATHLEEN JAMIE</b>