The Empire of Forgetting

by John Burnside

A powerful exploration of life and death, illness and grace, wonder and beauty, in the posthumous collection from one of our greatest contemporary poets

'It’s impossible not to love the world more when reading Burnside' GUARDIAN

'A master of language' HILARY MANTEL

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.

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.

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.

'Among the best writers of his generation, fully voiced and perfectly pitched’ ANDREW O'HAGAN

‘A titan of literature' KATHLEEN JAMIE

Genres: Poetry

48 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 7, 2025

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

[MEWO · Rating 5 out of 5]

"And that was all. I stood there
for a while,
not animal enough
to feel at home, but
knowing I belonged."

"A live thing, still, still
creaturely, and liable
to flourish:

ewig ... ewig ...
ewig ... ewig..."

- Variations on 'The Ruin'

[Ilse · Rating 3 out of 5]

"to be forgotten
or remembered?"

I actually liked this one. it cave me this very warm feeling.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

First light in the empire of forgetting,
the morning dusk, that blue between the houses,
owls in the beechwoods, lamplight through the trees,
a horse in its traces, a ton weight of slumber and warmth.

- ‘Listen with Mother (I)’

[Karen Mace · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful and poignant collection of poetry, heavily featuring nature and mortality

[Heather K Veitch · Rating 4 out of 5]

So earthily sublime.

[Chris Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A couple of good poems but I didn't love it.