John Burnside's remarkable book is full of strange, unnerving poems that hang in the memory like a myth or a song. These are poems of thwarted love and disappointment, of raw desire, of the stalking beast, 'eye-teeth/and muzzle/coated with blood'; poems that recognise 'we have too much to gain from the gods, and this is why/they fail to love us'; poems that tell of an obsessive lover coming to grief in a sequence that echoes the old murder ballads, or of a hunter losing himself in the woods while pursuing an unknown and possibly unknowable quarry.

Drawing on sources as various as the paintings of Pieter Brueghel and the lyrics of Delta blues, Black Cat Bone examines varieties of love, faith, hope and illusion, to suggest an unusual possibility: that when the search for what we expected to find - in the forest or in our own hearts - ends in failure, we can now begin the hard and disciplined quest for what is actually there.

Full of risk and wonder, Black Cat Bone shows the range of Burnside's abilities, but also strikes out for new territories. He remains consistently, though, one of our finest living lyric poets and each of these astonishing poems is as clear and memorable as 'a silver bracelet//falling for days/through an inch and a half/of ice'.

Winner of the Forward Prize for Poetry 2011 and the T.S. Eliot Prize 2011

About the Author
Amongst the most acclaimed writers of his generation, John Burnside has just been awarded the David Cohen Prize for a lifetime's achievement in literature. His novels, short stories, poetry and memoirs have won numerous other awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Whitbread Poetry Award, the Petrarca Prize and the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year. In 2011 Black Cat Bone won both the Forward and the T.S. Eliot Prizes for poetry. His most recent books are The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century and Aurochs and Auks: Essays on Mortality and Extinction. He is a professor in the School of English at St Andrews University.

Reviews
The unmistakable work of a master -- Bernard O'Donoghue * Times Literary Supplement *
A tour de force of liminal expression... Burnside is not a wispily ethereal poet. A stretch of country crossed during the hunt is captured in oils, not in thin watercolours...poignantly luminous...[an] engrossing collection -- M. Wynn Thomas * Guardian *
Black Cat Bone is a deserving winner of this year's Forward Prize for best collection. John Burnside's twelfth volume adds to and deepens a body of poetry that is already exceptionally significant - and utterly recognisable. A musician and chromaticist, he's a poet whose rapt, floating verse conjures up effects of great beauty in both the ear and the imagination -- Fiona Sampson * Independent *
A haunting book of great beauty, powered by love, childhood memory, human longing and loneliness. In an exceptional year, it is an outstanding book, one which the judges felt grew with every reading -- Gillian Clarke, chair of the T.S. Eliot Prize
One of the most gifted poets writing today -- Paul Batchelor * Times Literary Supplement *


Awards
Winner of T S Eliot Prize 2011 and Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection 2011.



Book Information
ISBN 9780224093859
Author John Burnside
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Jonathan Cape Ltd
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 105g
Dimensions(mm) 200mm * 133mm * 9mm