2021
First Published
4.06
Average Rating
128
Number of Pages
Aurochs and Auks is a deeply moving and intelligent meditation on the natural processes of death and extinction, renewal and continuity. Prompted by his own near-death in a time of pandemic, John Burnside explores the history of the auroch (Bos primigenius), the wild cattle that has become the source of so much sacred and cultural imagery across Europe, from the Minotaur and the Cretan bull dances to Spanish corrida traditions. He then tells the story of the puffin-like Great Auk, a curious bird whose extinction in the mid-nineteenth century was caused by human persecution. In the final essay Burnside proposes an alternative way of being – a richer, pagan deep-ecological narrative where we could abandon notions of human exceptionalism and accept our rightful place among the family of species.
Avg Rating
4.06
Number of Ratings
35
5 STARS
34%
4 STARS
46%
3 STARS
11%
2 STARS
9%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads
Author
John Burnside
Author · 28 books
John Burnside is the author of nine collections of poetry and five works of fiction. Burnside has achieved wide critical acclaim, winning the Whitbread Poetry Award in 2000 for The Asylum Dance which was also shortlisted for the Forward and T.S. Eliot prizes. Born in Scotland, he moved away in 1965, returning to settle there in 1995. In the intervening period he worked as a factory hand, a labourer, a gardener and, for ten years, as a computer systems designer. He now lives in Fife with his wife and children and teaches Creative Writing, Literature and Ecology courses at the University of St. Andrews. [Author photo © Norman McBeath]
