Sam Burnside

S am Burnside was born in Co Antrim and now lives and works in the city of Derry where he was founder and first Director of the Verbal Arts Centre, an educational charity he established in 1992 to promote literature in all its forms. He is the author of The Cathedral (1989) a long poem that won the Sunday Tribune/Hennessy Literary Award for Poetry in that year. His work has attracted a number of literary prizes, including an Allingham Poetry Prize ; the University of Ulster’s McCrea Literary Award for Literature and a Bass Ireland Award. His poetry has been published and broadcast widely.

‘Refuge Resulte’

Poetry, Poetry in Public, Readings

'Refuge Resulte' This new poem (Refuge Resulte) was commissioned by St Canice's Church, Eglinton to mark the 200th

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Poetry in Public Installations

Poetry in Public

Poetry in Public Installations Throughout his career Burnside has sought to make literature freely available to all individuals,

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Victoria Hall, Culmore

Poetry in Public

Victoria Hall, Culmore Heritage: Three poetry texts written in celebration of the human heritage of Culmore as exemplified

LauraAdmin2021-06-15T11:01:40+00:00

Brackfield Memorial Woods

Poetry, Poetry in Public

Brackfield Memorial Woods "Eight poems engraved on stone pillars in Brackfield Memorial Woods in Derry/Londonderry and incorporated into a

“Psychologically acute, immaculately written, it is a wholly unexpected insight into the lives of decent, suffering, people struggling to find peace in the deep world underneath the simplicities of the headlines” – Theo Durgan, Dublin-based poet, novelist, prose writer and essayist, former director of Poetry Ireland, the national poetry organisation.

A NEW NOVEL

My Name Is Rebecca

SAM BURNSIDE

‘I cannot forget. That memory is always present: it is like a red-hot coal, resting among the blackened cinders of the past. It is a day in September. The year is 1983. I am walking along a Belfast street with my sister, Ruth.’

Ruth Porter was killed in a bomb blast in central Belfast. Now, as the day of their 46th birthday approaches, her twin sister Rebecca is compelled to meet her killer, a man who has been freed from jail as a result of the Good Friday Agreement.

Rebecca’s troubled instinct is to retreat from the ghosts who inhabit her world. Her two closest friends take her by car from Belfast to West Donegal, to Slieve League, the highest sea cliffs in Europe. Here high above the Atlantic, on the ‘edge of the world’, she attains a startling clarity of vision. The question is, has she the strength to step forward into a new future?

Set in Northern Ireland at the height of The Troubles, and against the background of social and political change and energetic economic and cultural development of the time, My Name Is Rebecca explores the nature of loss, grief and guilt, and examines memory, accountability and the place of forgiveness and truth.

Price: £10.75

Publication date: January 2022

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