Possessing a friendship that spanned the Atlantic, Scotland’s John Burnside (1955-2024) and America’s Allison Funk were captured in conversation, speaking about what they enjoy about each other’s countries, from poetry and music to the mutability of the landscape and people. Allison Funk is the author of four volumes of verse, including The Tumbling Box (2009). John Burnside’s Black Cat Bone (2011), is one of only two titles to have won both the Forward Prize and the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry. In a conversation that runs from delta blues to Virginia Woolf, Funk and Burnside explain the way in which they’ve influenced each other’s work while still being ‘opposite sides of the same coin’.

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