By John Rice, Subway Poet-in-Residence

There's a case to be made that says you won't ever know Burns - and I mean really know Burns - unless you grew up in Ayrshire. For Burns was not just 'Scottish', he was an Ayrshire man; and there is a view that, as an Ayrshire man, it probably takes another Ayrshire man or woman to truly know him.

You can tell I'm somewhat in agreement with the premise. That's because I was born in Glasgow and only moved to live in Ayrshire when I was five years old. My relatives remained in the city - Possilpark, Springburn - and thus my heart and my allegiances remained there too. My family moved to Saltcoats in 1953.

Anyway, Saltcoats is also hardly Ayrshire, I mean geographically it is, but spiritually (at least when I lived there) it had closer links to Glasgow and Paisley than it did to Maybole or Stewarton; towns that are unquestionably and irrepressibly Ayrshire (and they have the accent to prove it!).

It follows, then, that I don't know Burns. And that's a fact I'm happy to state.

I do not know Burns but I know Burns's poetry. That's the difference.

I have been close to Burns's poetry since childhood: his songs and poems were part of the linguistic landscape, just as they were (and I hope still are) for all Scots children of my generation. I have loved his poems as a child, as a teenager and as an adult. Indeed, I not only love his poetry, I own his poetry. Not in any copyrighted or prized-Kilmarnock-Edition-in-my-possession sense, but in the sense that the poems and the songs are part of me - I would not be who I am had it not been for the influence and nurture I have received from Burns's writing.

At secondary school (in Irvine) I fell under the spell of words. Something (or maybe someone) flicked a switch in my brain that said: "Take these words; they are your building bricks, make something of them." I loved Spanish and French lessons and I had been writing stories and poems since I was about nine or 10 years old. When everyone else in the class
'oh no-ed' and groaned when the English teacher said open your book at Hamlet or The Wife of Bath, I could not understand why they didn't like these words.

On reflection, I understand now… no-one should have been daft enough to waste great writing on teenagers! We should have been reading and studying, yes studying, 1960s pop songs and sci-fi books - young people deserve the exhilarating literature of their times, not the impregnable literature of their ancestors.

And when the teacher said we'd read some Burns, I was always first to open the book, and first to attempt to read those weird Ayrshire words that sounded so authentic yet somehow so made up! I took to Burns essentially because it was another language, just as French and Spanish were alien to me, so was the language of Burns. However, I had some kind of advantage for I knew that language is simply a code - so it was simply a task that involved appreciating and then understanding the code. And with Burns it's often a case of appreciating the contextual narrative of his poetry rather than trying to comprehend every single word.

Perhaps I was lucky. And if I was, I am certainly grateful, for I've enjoyed a life immersed in poetry and in the company of poets. I've met and organised readings for some of the greatest poets of my generation - Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Edwin Morgan, the American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and the Russian dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I have published many books of poetry myself and I am proud to say that I have taken my poetry in live performance to nearly half-a-million children and young people.

I have to thank Robert Burns for those privileges in my life. I never really knew him (as I have said) but he has been a companion, a sort of standing stone in the poetry field. Always there, always approachable, even though the territory might have been unfamiliar.

Another thing I enjoyed as a young man was running. Again, all my schoolmates hated that endless trudging around the cross country course but I loved it… and I am still a runner. So indulge me while I adopt another metaphor for how I feel about Burns. He fixed my starting blocks, timed my progress along the track, and I have no doubt he'll be there with the stopwatch when I run through the tape at the end of the race. Mind you, I certainly won't win that race, but when Robert and I celebrate with a dram afterwards, we'll probably sing that song he made, you know the one, The Cardin o'T - that's always been a favourite of mine.

So, no, I don't know Burns. I know Burns' poetry… every blessed beat of it.

Find out more about John Rice's Homecoming activities on this page.

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