The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Ruin, Blossom

Ruin, Blossom

Summary

A remarkable collection exploring ageing, mortality and environmental destruction

**WINNER OF THE DAVID COHEN PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2023**

'By far the best British poet alive' SPECTATOR

'A master of language' HILARY MANTEL

In this powerful, moving book, John Burnside takes his cue from Schiller, who recognised that, as one thing fades, so another flourishes: everywhere and always, in matters great and small, new life blossoms amongst the ruins.

Here, in poems that explore ageing, mortality, environmental destruction and mental illness, Burnside not only mourns what is lost in passing, but also celebrates the new, and sometimes unexpected, forms that emerge from such losses. An elegy for a dead lover ends with a quiet recognition of everyday beauty – first sun streaming through the trees … a skylark in the near field, flush with song – as the speaker emerges from lockdown after a long illness.

Throughout, the poet attends to the quality of grace – numinous, exquisite, fleeting as an angel’s wing – and the broken tryst between humankind and its spiritual and animal elements, even with itself: the gaunt deer on the roads/like refugees. He acknowledges the inevitability of the fading towards death, but still finds chimes of light in the darkness – insisting that, here and now, even in decline, the world, when given its due attention, is all Annunciation.

Reviews

  • For my money, John Burnside is by far the best British poet alive
    Spectator

About the author

John Burnside

John Burnside was among the most acclaimed writers of his generation. His novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs won numerous awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial, Saltire Scottish Book of the Year and, in 2024, he received the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime’s achievement in literature. In 2011 Black Cat Bone won both the Forward and the T.S. Eliot Prizes for poetry.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more