John Burnside on Poetry, Attention and Truth

"After working in computer systems analysis for a decade, John Burnside became a full-time writer in 1994. John has published 14 books of poetry, and has won the Geoffrey Faber Prize, the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Petrarca Preis and, most recently, the Forward and T.S. Eliot Prizes for his poetry. He has also published eight novels and a memoir. He is Professor of English at the University of St Andrews." We met to talk about the what, how and why of poetry as described in his book of criticism The Music of Time. Topics discussed include poetry making nothing happen, poetry making lots happen, paying attention, listening, lightening rods, the sound of the earth, everyday life, elitism, the questions that dog humans, the human name not meaning shit to a tree, connections, LSD and the continuum, dams, killing lawyers, understanding systems and not understanding them, Facebook, the "n" word, compost heaps, Leopardi, Montale, and more...