The Light Trap

by John Burnside

A wondrous new collection of poetry from the winner of the 2000 Whitbread Poetry Award.

In his eighth collection, the poet looks deeply into how we see our world: the organic relationship between the environment and the unconscious, between ideas and creatures, in poems whose protagonists – from the deer in a suburban garden to the poet’s six-month-old son – are infinitely mysterious. Resonant and luminous, this is a work of intimacy and wonder from one of Britain’s most important poets.

Genres: Poetry

64 pages, Paperback

First published April 18, 2002

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]

incredible work so evanescent but precise all the same it's probably the best evocation of a lot of philosophical strands I've seen this side of the century and certainly my favourite pull on monism. Rereading the A-level classic History and Loving it even more than I did back then? Unbelievable & definitely one of my favourite single pomes of the last 20

[Hannah]

I loved this. I borrowed it from the library, but I might buy my own copy.

From Of Gravity and Light
(enlightenment)

What we need most, we learn from the menial tasks:
the novice raking sand in Buddhist texts,
or sweeping leaves, his hands chilled to the bone,
while understanding hovers out of reach;
the changeling in a folk tale, chopping logs,
poised at the dizzy edge of transformation;

and everything they do is gravity:
swaying above the darkness of the well
to haul the bucket in; guiding the broom;
finding the body's kinship with the earth
beneath their feet, the lattice of a world
where nothing turns or stands outside the whole;

and when the insight comes, they carry on
with what's at hand: the gravel path; the fire;
knowing the soul is no more difficult
than water, or the fig tree by the well
that stood for decades, barren and inert,
till every branch was answered in the stars.

[Oliver Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Light Trap is a magnificent poem I come back to again and again. I do recommend this collection of poems suffused with the call of the wild.

[Mirai Blackwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up this book at the right time. Read it while watching the shore and the mountains.