Born in Scotland in 1955, John Burnside was a computer engineer until he became a freelance writer in 1996. His first collection of poetry, The Hoop, was published in 1988 and won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award and his subsequent volumes quickly established him as one of Britain's finest poets. The novelist and poet Adam Thorpe once wrote that, 'If genius is operating anywhere in English poetry at present, I feel it is here, in Burnside's singular music.' In 1992, Feast Days was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. The Asylum Dance (2000) was the winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award and shortlisted for both the Forward Poetry Prize and the T S Eliot Prize. His most recent collection The Light Trap (2001) was also shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Burnside is also the author of a book of short stories and several novels.