“The Death Issue” December 2015 1

HARKview with John Burnside
Berlin, 5th June, the afternoon
I met John in suburban Berlin. It was perhaps the hottest day of the year so far, and beneath that
heat we sat in a certain tropical isolation on the shaded balcony of his apartment. We were
interrupted by a singular, barking dog and - later - a scooter. We talked - among other things -
about ecopoetics, Kurosawa, the myth of the “bluesman”, and a red balloon. This is a verbatim
transcript of our conversation: sans dog, sans scooter.
*
OV: It's the fifth of June, in Berlin. Thank you for doing the interview - first of all. I
guess one of my first questions would be, because we're in Berlin, what were the
reasons that led you to come back to Berlin so many times, and to live here?
JB: well, the original reason I came to Berlin a long time ago was to do with books and
with selling books here, I suppose, and doing readings. But it always made a big
impression on me, the city. So to cut a long story short, I've been coming for several years
and three years ago I was doing a residency, and I was there for a few months in summer,
and besides from me coming over to do the residency, my family would come over and
rent a place, so we could all be here in the summer, and I would have somewhere to work,
and then see them when I wanted to. And I worked really well and the kids loved it. And
then I came next year for a short trip and again liked it very much, so, luckily we're living
here at the auspices of the DAAD which is a fantastic organisation that organises these
exchanges, so we've been here for a year now and the kids go to a school they like and I've
got things to do, and they've got a more diverse group of friends than they would have in
Scotland. So for all kinds of reasons as a family we're liking it, and that's why we've
stayed. And for me as a writer – I mean, in terms of just daily life, it's a good place to work
OB: yeah
JB: and there's a kind of nice thing about being outside the kind of pool of your own
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