Pauline’s Friday report back:

Yesterday’s session started with an author, Heather O’Neill, using her unhappy childhood experiences as the basis for her novel.  Today’s first session was John Burnside talking about his memoir, A Lie About My Father, recounting his unhappy childhood and working through the issues he had with his father.  It was until his father had died, that John discovered his father was an abandoned child – literally left on a doorstep.  This could have explained the toughness his father showed towards him– boys had to be made tough.  For men of his father’s generation cruelty was an ideology.  The finer and therefore ‘weaker’ activities such as reading and music has to be killed off. John told of his favourite teddy bear being thrown in the fire because it had been left on the floor – “you’re too big for a teddy” he was told.  He was 6.  I loved the raw emotion of this session, though both Philippa and Anthony thought that with 8 collections of poetry published they would have liked to have heard a poem or two.

Books in our library by John Burnside