The Empire of Forgetting by John Burnside
Poetry Book Society Recommendation Autumn 2025
Anna Gurton-Wachter They reveal the poet at

They reveal the poet at the height of her creative powers

Although he never travelled

the undigested cake and eat it of daily life

an ‘iron harvest’ that takes in the jumbled debris of the Hundred Years’ War

and in the bursting of balloons

The Empire of Forgetting by John Burnside<br><b>Poetry Book Society Recommendation Autumn 2025</b><br> Anna Gurton-Wachter They reveal the poet atJohn 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