The Empire of Forgetting by John Burnside
Poetry Book Society Recommendation Autumn 2025
Anna Gurton-Wachter Simply click 'Give a Membership'

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and in the bursting of balloons

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

Although he never travelled

The Empire of Forgetting by John Burnside<br><b>Poetry Book Society Recommendation Autumn 2025</b><br> Anna Gurton-Wachter Simply click 'Give a Membership'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