Book description
From memories of childhood and personal loss to the quiet celebration
of a lover's navigational skills, from meditations on nature and
sexuality to the fantasy world of aquarium fish, the poems in A NORMAL
SKIN cover a wide range: lyrical in tone, and highly visual, they
express once again the poet's sense of wonder at the world, while
exploring some new preoccupations, including love and identity the
tension between masking and self-revelation, and the writer's pleasure
at returning to Scotland after a long absense. Most significant,
however, is the continuing exploration of the relationship between self
and other, and of the constant shifting of territory and boundaries,
seen through the prism of love and home. John Burnside was born in
1955 and now lives in Fife. He has published five previous collections
and has won a number of awards, including the Geoffrey Faber Memorial
Prize. He was selected as one of the twenty Best of Young British Poets
in 1994. His first novel is
The Dumb House.
