My desert island poet

If I had to be marooned on a desert island with a stranger, that stranger would be John Burnside.

Not that he’s a literary Ray Mears: I rather doubt that catching fish with his bare hands or lighting a fire without matches are among his skills. Nor would he be an easy companion, since by his own account he is a brooder and an insomniac and a craver of solitude. He is the erstwhile resident of a mental institution. He also has complicated feelings about women. But he’d be my perfect companion, still. For one thing, the isle would be full of sounds and sweet airs that give delight, because Burnside is the finest poet writing in Britain today. For another, he’s a brilliant and utterly original thinker, a stranger to received opinion given to flashes of wit and a rare genius of insight. He has read widely and well. He’d notice such interesting things about the stars and the colour of the sea that would-be rescuers would be waved away.