Ian Burgham

Ian Burgham, the publisher and award winning poet, was born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1950. He has lived in New Zealand and Scotland, and currently resides in Canada. He was educated in Kingston, Ontario where he grew up. He graduated in 1973 from Queen's University with a B.A.(Hons)in English Literature. While at Queen's he studied the craft of poetry and poetic theory with Professor George Whalley, poet and well-known Coleridge scholar. In 1973, Burgham moved to New Zealand where he spent nearly two years teaching English at Wellington College. In 1975 he moved to Scotland where he attended Edinburgh University, graduating with an M. Litt. degree in Blake studies. His thesis was written on the topic of William Blake's theory of imagination and the traditional origins of Blake's poetry and theories.

History

Burgham, an associate of Canada's The League of Canadian Poets, worked in Edinburgh with the publishing company Canongate Books as a book salesman and an editor. During his two years at Canongate, he assisted Stephanie Wolfe Murray and Charles Wyld in the development of their list of authors. At this time Canongate authors included such writers and poets as Iain Crichton Smith, Sorley MacLean, Andrew Greig, Lady Naomi Mitchison, Harry Horse, Robin Jenkins, Alasdair Gray and Alistair Reid.

In 1980 Burgham became Publishing Manager of Macdonald Publishers of Loanhead. He worked with the aging publisher and literary icon, Calum Macdonald. With Macdonald, Ian Burgham published the work of Robert Garioch, Iain Crichton Smith, Nigel Tranter, Alexander McCall Smith and others, and re-released novels from out-of-print authors such as Eric Linklater and John Buchan.

In 1982 Burgham returned to Canada to pursue a career in business and medical publishing. He co-founded the publishing company Grosvenor House Press and later became a partner in a healthcare communications, PR and promotion agency. Since 2001 he has worked as an adjunct assistant professor at Queen's University at Kingston, Canada in development and contracts pertaining to medical information, research and medical education. For a short time he helped to promote the Griffin Prize for Poetry to international markets. He continues as a director of the Rowers' Pub Reading Series, one of Ontario's foremost literary venues for major writers and poets who read from both published and work in development. The Reading Series has been in operation since 2008, until 2009 when Rower's was sold and became the Harbord House.

His poems continue to appear in literary journals and anthologies. Journals in which his work has appeared include; the "Literary Review of Canada", "Queen's Quarterly", "Precipice", dANDdelion, "Harpweaver", "Prairie Fire", "Jones Avenue", "Contemporary Verse2" (CV2), "The New Quarterly", "Ascent Aspirations" and others.

He continues to collaborate with the well-known San Francisco-based jewellery designer, Jeanine Payer.

Plaudits

In 2004 he won the Queen's University Well-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 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. It was nominated for the ReLit Award for the best book of poetry published in Canada in 2007. A review written by Christina Decarie appeared in the autumn edition (No. 159, 2009) of The Antigonish Review describing “The Stone Skippers”:

“This (the collection) 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. As Burgham asks of us,

Leave me alone here on the gravel walk. I have joined the lively dead.

Such is the terror of Burgham’s poems, but also such is the joy.”

“It is a wonderful terrible collection, a pleasure to read and, with its melancholy cover art and thick, generous paper, a pleasure to hold in your hands.”'''''

A review, written by poet Kevin Gillam, appeared in Five Bells, Journal of the Poets Union of Australia and reads in part:

“‘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.” ''

A new collection of poems, "The Grammar of Distance", edited by the poet, Catherine Graham, with a Foreword by Canadian award-winning poet, novelist, and Professor of Creative Writing, Jeanette Lynes, is forthcoming from Tightrope Books, Canada and MacLean Dubois, Scotland. It will be released in both countries in April, 2010.

Bibliography

A Confession of Birds, Chapbook, MacLean Dubois, 2003/4

• Burgham, Ian (June 2007). The Stone Skippers. Tightrope Books. ISBN 978-0973864588. 

The Grammar of Distance April, 2010, Tightrope Books isbn=978-1-926639-09-3