Collected Poems of Robert Burns, a review

The Complete Poems of Robert Burns is not a small book, clocking in at 600 pages. This contains almost, if not all, of the poems and songs he wrote throughout his life. Burns is a celebrated Scottish poet, with Burns Night being observed by Scots around the world on the poets birthday, the 25th January.

Collected Poems of Robert Burns

I’ve wanted to read Burns’ poetry for many years now, so I was excited to dive into this collection. There are some absolutely beautiful poems here, I’ll list my favourites further down, but this also seems to be just a collection of everything so there are some that aren’t as engaging.

If you’re coming into this as someone with little to no knowledge of Scots, there is a glossary in the back that’ll help you with the words you don’t know. But you will still struggle with some of the poems because the rhyming is in Scots. The English pronunciation of the words don’t rhyme, but with the Scots accent they do. For an English person I’m pretty decent with Scots, but I’d have to double back and reread the words in the Scots accent to get the rhyme to work. If you’re totally unfamiliar with Scottish accents it could be worth listening to someone Scottish read a few of these poems out loud, I’m sure there’s videos on YouTube.

Here are the poems that I enjoyed the most, they vary in theme from mourning, to nature, to political themes:

The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie, To A Mouse, Lament of Mary Queen of Scots, Winter, The Inventory, Elegy on the Year 1788, On the Birth of a Posthumous Child, The Selkirk Grace, Line Written on a Banknote, Auld Lang Syne, The Highland Widow’s Lament.

I didn’t rate this collection on CAWPILE, because it doesn’t fit into the categories there. However, I’ve rated this collection as a 3*. There are some wonderful poems like the ones I mentioned above, but there are also a fair few that I didn’t enjoy or just found neutral that brought the rating down to a respectable 3.

Highlight here for trigger warnings: racism, misogyny, death.

This is a really interesting collection, and I definitely think that Burns is a poet worth checking out. I don’t know if this 600 page bind up is for everyone but I’m glad I’ve read it. Have you read any of Burns poems? What did you think of them?