Ian Burgham (born 1950 in Auckland, New Zealand) is a poet. He is the son of Lt. Cmdr. Allen Russell Burgham, DSC, MiD, CD. and Jean Wallace. He has lived in New Zealand and Scotland, but currently resides in Canada. He spent his formative years in Kingston, Ontario and graduated from Queen's Universityin 1972. While at Queen's he studied poetry and poetic process with Professor George Whalley, poet, writer and well-known Coleridge scholar. In 1973, Burgham moved to New Zealand where he taught at Wellington College (New Zealand). In 1975 he moved to Scotland to attend Edinburgh University, taking an M. Litt. degree in Blake studies. His thesis, written under the supervision of Professor Michael Phillips, focussed on William Blake's theory of imagination and the origins of Blake's poetry and theories.
In 1982 Burgham returned to Canada to pursue a career in general list, business and medical publishing. He co-founded the publishing company Grosvenor House Press and later became a partner in an international healthcare communications, medical education agency. Later after assisting Dr. Walter Rosser, OC in the formation of the Centre for Effective Practice within the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto Burgham began work as an adjunct assistant professor in the Centre for Studies in Primary Care at Queen's University. He resigned that position in 2012 to work with Dr Fred Tudiver in establishing the International Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Canada.
For a short time he helped to promote the Griffin Prize for Poetry to international markets. Burgham also collaborated with artist Uno Hoffmann in 2011.[1] Up until 2012 Burgham volunteered as a director of the Rowers' Pub Reading Series, one of Ontario's foremost literary venues for readings by recognized writers and poets. The Reading Series has been in operation since 2008.
Burgham has published six poetry collections; A Confession of Birds, The Stone Skippers (Tightrope Books), The Grammar of Distance (Tightrope Books), The Unquiet (Quattro Books), and Midnight (Quattro Books and MacLean Dubois of Edinburgh), the Sophia Poems (LyricalMyrical Press, Toronto). His poems continue to appear in literary journals and anthologies. Journals in which his work has appeared include; the "Literary Review of Canada",[2] "Queen's Quarterly",[3] "Precipice",[4] dANDdelion, "Harpweaver", "Prairie Fire", "Jones Avenue", "Contemporary Verse2" (CV2), "The New Quarterly", "Ascent Aspirations", the Dalhousie Review, Northern Poetry Review, the Toronto Quarterly, ARC Magazine, Five Bells Review, (AUS), Gutter Magazine (UK) and others.
In 2012 he moved to Quattro Books of Toronto. His first collection under the Quattro Books imprint, FourPoints EditionsThe Unquiet was edited by A. F. Moritz and Allan Briesmaster and was published in November 2012. His second work under the imprint of Quattro Books, "Midnight" was published in 2015.
In the summer of 2012 he read with Scottish poet Douglas Dunn OBE, at the Edinburgh Festival and with Todd Swift. A. F. Moritz, and Catherine Graham at Canada House in London, England. In 2015 Burgham was part of a poetry tour of the UK comprising Canadian poets Catherine Graham, Jeanette Lynes, Stephen Heighton along with Mike Garry of the UK) with readings in Manchester, London, Stratford-upon-Avon, Edinburgh and Glasgow in 2015.
Plaudits
In 2004 he won the Queen's UniversityWell-versed Poetry Award. In that same year, with the support of two principals of MacLean Dubois, Charles MacLean and Alexander McCall Smith, a chapbook, "A Confession of Birds", was published in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2007, Burgham's first full collection, "The Stone Skippers", (with an introduction by Australian poet Roland Leach) was published in the UK by MacLean Dubois, in Australia and New Zealand by SunLine Press and in Canada by Tightrope Books. These collections were followed by "The Grammar of Distance" in 2010 and "The Unquiet" in 2012. "The Stone Skippers" was nominated for the prestigious ReLit Awardin 2007. A review written by Christina Decarie appeared in the autumn edition (No. 159, 2009) of The Antigonish Review describing "The Stone Skippers":
"This (collection of poems) is hard work, but it is worth it. For always the opening poem, 'The Stone Skippers' is with us. Waking up panicked and rushed with no memory and only a sense of time slipping quickly through our fingers is an easy state to fall into, but it is a miserable one. Facing loss and the spaces it leaves us is painful, dreadful, and has its potential for despair. But it also comes with opportunities, connections and surprises. And this emptiness, in its own way, is full, and the loneliness complete. This collection is a coming to terms with loss, and it leaves us with comfort, not fear. It is a wonderful terrible collection."
"‘The Stone Skippers’ by Ian Burgham is a beautifully published hard-back, generously spaced poems on high quality paper. And the work itself in every way continues this attention to detail, employing word and silence in equal measure. Here is a writer capable of great subtlety, fusing the turning point moment of short story, depth and length of novel, ‘in-breath’ of exalted verse. A small ‘I’ captures nature, philosophy, the quiet moment, the fleeting thought, then magnifies and shapes into word. Many poems possess the intimacy of listening in on someone talking to themselves. Use of form, poetic device, economy and choice of language, blurring of fancy and fiction – all are employed with intelligence and readerly insight."
And again
"‘The Stone Skippers’ is a powerful, evocative, ‘real’ reading experience, quotes and de-construction somehow not doing it justice. Burgham demonstrates the dancing quality and length of well crafted poetry, like the skipping stone, well chosen and flung at the precise moment. The poems are to be savoured, lingered over, allowed to resonate and be remembered."
Sorley MacLean was a Scottish Gaelic poet, described by the Scottish Poetry Library as "one of the major Scottish poets of the modern era" because of his "mastery of his chosen medium and his engagement with the European poetic tradition and European politics". Nobel Prize Laureate Seamus Heaney credited MacLean with saving Scottish Gaelic poetry.
Christopher Murray Grieve, best known by his pen name Hugh MacDiarmid, was a Scottish poet, journalist, essayist and political figure. He is considered one of the principal forces behind the Scottish Renaissance and has had a lasting impact on Scottish culture and politics. He was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland in 1928 but left in 1933 due to his Marxist–Leninist views. He joined the Communist Party of Great Britain the following year only to be expelled in 1938 for his nationalist sympathies. He would subsequently stand as a parliamentary candidate for both the Scottish National Party (1945) and Communist Party of Great Britain (1964).
Norman Alexander MacCaig was a Scottish poet and teacher. His poetry, in modern English, is known for its humour, simplicity of language and great popularity.
Sydney Goodsir Smith was a New Zealand-born Scottish poet, artist, dramatist and novelist. He wrote poetry in literary Scots, sometimes referred to as Lallans, and was a major figure of the Scottish Renaissance.
Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, was a Canadian poet who twice won the Governor General's Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada" during the 1970s and 1980s.
Wilson Pugsley MacDonald was a popular Canadian poet who "was known mainly in his own time for his considerable platform abilities" as a reader of his poetry. By reading fees, and by selling his books at readings, he was able to make a living from his poetry alone. In the 1920s he was so popular that, according to writer John Robert Colombo, "his fame eclipsed that of Robert Service and Pauline Johnson."
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Roderick Chalmers "Roddy" Lumsden was a Scottish poet, writing mentor and quizzer. He was born in St Andrews and educated at Madras College and the University of Edinburgh. He published seven collections of poetry, a number of pamphlets, and a collection of trivia. He also edited a generational anthology of British and Irish poets of the 1990s and 2000s, Identity Parade, and The Salt Book of Younger Poets. His collections The Book of Love and So Glad I'm Me were shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Daniel Scott Tysdal is a Canadian poet and film director whose work approaches the lyric mode with an experimental spirit. In June 2007, Tysdal received the ReLit Award for Poetry.
Alex Boyd is a Canadian poet, essayist, editor, and critic.
Christopher Whyte is a Scottish poet, novelist, translator and critic. He is a novelist in English, a poet in Scottish Gaelic, the translator into English of Marina Tsvetaeva, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Maria Rilke, and a critic of Scottish and international literature. His work in Gaelic appears under the name Crìsdean MacIlleBhàin.
Scottish Gaelic literature refers to literary works composed in the Scottish Gaelic language, which is, like Irish and Manx, a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages. Gaelic literature was also composed in Gàidhealtachd communities throughout the global Scottish diaspora where the language has been and is still spoken.
Susanna Roxman was an Anglophone writer, poet and critic born in Stockholm; her father’s family is Scottish. She was considered a gifted child. Her first few books were written in Swedish, but she switched over to English as her professional language. After having worked for some years as a secretary, a ballet teacher, and a fashion model, Roxman studied at Stockholm University, King’s College at London University, Lund University, and Gothenburg University, where she earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. From 1996 to 2005 she headed the Centre of Classical Mythology at Lund University. She had several collections of poetry published, as well as literary criticism. Her poems have also appeared in literary magazines world-wide. Some of these pieces have been translated into Arabic and Persian. Roxman has taken part in many poetry readings, notably at the Edinburgh Festival.
Roy McFadden was a Northern Irish poet, editor, and lawyer.
Tightrope Books was a Canadian independent book publisher based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Elizabeth Bartlett was an American poet and writer noted for her lyrical and symbolic poetry, creation of the new twelve-tone form of poetry, founder of the international non-profit organization Literary Olympics, Inc., and known as an author of fiction, essays, reviews, translations, and as an editor.
Maureen Hynes is a Canadian poet and author. Her debut collection of poetry, Rough Skin, won the League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian in 1996.
Iain mac Ailein, or John MacLean was a poet and highly important figure in both Scottish Gaelic literature and in that of Canadian Gaelic. Before emigrating with his family to Nova Scotia in 1819, MacLean had served as the Chief Bard to the 15th Chief of Clan MacLean of Coll. Following his arrival in the New World, MacLean remained a prolific poet and composed one of the most famous and most popular Scottish Gaelic emigration poems, Òran do dh' Aimearaga, which is also known as, A' Choille Ghruamach. Robert Dunbar has dubbed MacLean, "perhaps the most important of all the poets who emigrated during the main period of Gaelic overseas emigration", which took place between 1730 and 1860.
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