All One Breath

Shortlisted for the 2014 T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize for Best Collection In this absorbing, brilliant new collection âe" his first since Black Cat Bone âe" John Burnside examines our shared experience of this mortal world: how we are âe~all one breathâe(tm) and âe" with that breath âe" how we must strive towards the harmony of choir. Recognising that our attitudes to other creatures âe" human and non-human âe" cause too much damage and hurt, that âe~weâe(tm)ve been going at this for years: / a steady delete / of anything that tells us what we areâe(tm), these poems celebrate the fleeting, charged moments where, through measured and gracious encounters with other lives, we find our true selves, and bring some brief, insubstantial goodness and beauty into being. He presents the world in a series of still lifes, in tableaux vivants and tableaux morts, in laboratory tests, anatomy lessons, in a Spiegelkabinett where the reflections in the mirrors, distorted as they seem, reveal buried truths. All the images are in some sense self-portraits: all are, in some way, elegies. One of the finest and most celebrated lyric poets at work today, John Burnside is a master of the moment âe" when the frames of our film seem to slow and stop and a life slips through the gap in between âe" and each poem here is a perfect, uncanny hymn to humanity, set down âe~to tell the lives of othersâe(tm).