A Normal Skin

by John Burnside

From memories of childhood and personal loss to the quiet celebration of a lover's navigational skills, from meditations on nature and sexuality to the fantasy world of aquarium fish, the poems in A NORMAL SKIN cover a wide lyrical in tone, and highly visual, they express once again the poet's sense of wonder at the world, while exploring some new preoccupations, including love and identity the tension between masking and self-revelation, and the writer's pleasure at returning to Scotland after a long absense. Most significant, however, is the continuing exploration of the relationship between self and other, and of the constant shifting of territory and boundaries, seen through the prism of love and home.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 1997

About the author

John Burnside was a Scottish writer. He was the author of nine collections of poetry and five works of fiction. Burnside achieved wide critical acclaim, winning the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2000 for The Asylum Dance which was also shortlisted for the Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes. He left Scotland in 1965, returning to settle there in 1995. In the intervening period he worked as a factory hand, a labourer, a gardener and, for ten years, as a computer systems designer. Laterly, he lived in Fife with his wife and children and taught Creative Writing, Literature and Ecology courses at the University of St. Andrews.

[Author photo © Norman McBeath]

Reviews

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

a book in a jaundiced cloak

! gorgeous

[Ocean · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this poetry collection in one go. It called at me, with its beautiful and bright yellow cover and I am so happy to have picked it up. It is my first encounter with John Burnside's work and it has made me want to read more.
With images of domestic life, seaside towns, roadkills, garden flowers and themes like loneliness, grief, renewal and love, it had everything to make me like it. There is something eerie about some of these poems, and a true sense of melancholy.

It spoke to me a lot.