Corsair Poetry signs poet and Rough Trade Books editor Burns’ second collection

Corsair Poetry has acquired Natural Burial Ground, the second full collection from Caught By The River Poet-In-Residence and editor at Rough Trade Books, Will Burns.

Deputy publisher Sarah Castleton acquired UK and Commonwealth rights in the collection from Becky Thomas at Lewinsohn Literary, for publication in March 2024.

The poems in Natural Burial Ground deploy Burns’ deep interest in place and the natural world to excavate the emotional impact of grief and loss, the publisher says, describing it as a collection that “wrestles with the scope and heft of elegy, while retaining the poet’s humour and startling range of imagery: it speaks to our connections to landscape, to family, to music, wildlife and history.”

Burns is the author of a previous collection, Country Music (Offord Road Books, 2020) which won the Laurel Prize for Best First Collection and he was named one of the four Faber & Faber New Poets for 2014 with his debut pamphlet. His debut novel, The Paper Lantern, was published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson in 2021. For it, he was named as one of the Observer’s Top 10 Debut Novelists. As an editor at Rough Trade Books, he has worked on the likes of Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fan.

Burns said: “The bulk of these poems came, as they so often do, as a surprise and, perhaps, a distraction from and means of processing the business of loss and grief, which as well as being intensely personal, has become a base note in so many of our conversations about the things I have loved for so long – landscape, the environment, human and non-human interaction. All things need their right place, too, and I’m more than chuffed these poems have found theirs at Corsair, with Sarah and the crew there.”

Castleton said: “Will is one of our unsung greats, a wonderful poet and a generous champion of our country’s arts and culture more broadly. The voice in Natural Burial Ground is tender-hearted and honest, easefully attentive to our inner landscapes and natural world, taking in deep history and daily reality as he reckons with grief. The music of Will’s writing is immediately moving, as truth.”