Biographical note: Richard Burns was born in London in 1943, into a family of musicians. He has lived in Italy, Greece, the USA and Yugoslavia. His perspectives as a poet combine English, French, Mediterranean, Jewish, Slavic, American and Oriental influences. He deals equally with historical and political material, with inner worlds, and with relationships and everyday life. In the 1970’s, he founded and ran the (now almost legendary) international Cambridge Poetry Festival. His work has been translated into 18 languages.
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EAN13: 9781876857905 ISBN-10: 1876857900 ISBN-13: 9781876857905 Author: Richard Burns Title: For the Living Series: Salt Modern Poets Product class: BC Language: eng Audience: General/trade BIC subject category: CTCH1 Publisher: Salt Publishing Pub date: 01-Sep-04 Extent: 176pp Height: 216 mm Width: 140 mm Thickness: 10 mm Weight: 264 gms Supplier:Gardners Books Supplier:Ingram Book Group Supplier:Inbooks (James Bennett) Availability: IP Price: GBP 11.99 Price: USD 17.95 Rights: World
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description/annotation: This first volume of Richard Burns’ Selected Writings consists of longer poems written between 1965 and 2000, in Greece, Italy, England and Yugoslavia. Burns’s predominant concerns are love, vision and justice. The keynote is magnanimity. Oppression is confronted and defeated. Personal relations and integrities are affirmed. Eros is celebrated.
Main description: This first volume of Selected Writings by Richard Burns consists of longer poems written between 1965 and 2000, in Greece, Italy, England and Yugoslavia. While some poems, like ‘Avebury’ and ‘Croft Woods’, have their focal points in a recognisably English landscape and consciousness, there is no insular limitation on the matter. Burns has written: “I would rather think of myself as a European poet who writes in English than as an ‘English’ poet.”
The range and breadth of this ambitious collection confirm Burns’ place in the European late modernist mainstream. The predominant concerns are love, vision and justice. Oppression is confronted and defeated. Eros is celebrated. The voice of the Other is ever-present. Personal relations and integrities are affirmed. The keynote is magnanimity.
The selection opens with ‘The Easter Rising 1967’, a poem against dictatorship, written during the military takeover in Greece. Involvement with Greece resurfaces in ‘Black Light’, a sequence dedicated to the memory of George Seferis. Also featured are poems set in former Yugoslavia, including ‘The Voice in the Garden’ dedicated to Burns’s friend Ivan V. Lalić. Other poems are rooted in family and filial relations ( ‘May’), in Cabbalistic Judaism (‘The Rose of Sharon’, ‘Tree’), in Breton and Welsh tradition (‘Ys’), in art (‘Transformations’, ‘Against the Day’), and in post-Holocaust consciousness and ecology (‘Angels’).
For the Living includes the award-winning poems ‘The Rose of Sharon’ (Keats Memorial Prize) and ‘In Memory of George Seferis I’ (Duncan Lawrie Prize), as well as a range of previously unpublished pieces. Notes provide dedications, dates and places of composition.
Table of contents: Contents Editorial Note Acknowledgments The Easter Rising 1967 Actaeon Avebury Angels Ode on the End of the Third Exile Naming the Creatures The Rose of Sharon Ys Transformations I. In Memory of Frances Richards, Painter II. Dawn III. Awakening IV. Midsummer V. Memory VI. Two Lakes Tree Black Light In Memory of George Seferis (I) The Voice Soulmonger Volta Cicadas (I) Only the Common Miracle Salt Neolithic Song, For Petro Shell Cicadas (II) In Memory of George Seferis (II) Ambassador May Against the Day The Ballad of the Seagull The Voice in the Garden Wayside Shrine Croft Woods Vasilissa
… tree of spirits tree of secrets buried in heaven to flower through veins arteries nerves capillary tree meristematic your tap root drowned in infinite skies I descend up and ascend down … nurturing moss and lichen mould gathering mushroom tree mother of orchids and mistletoe tree of Dryads tree of Druids where the spider weaves and the rooks nest and the bat flitters and the kestrel waits tree of lives of consciousness generative language tree speaking names telling stories histories transformations depthless tree deathless tree tree of comrades of airs I breathe unpruned untameable immortal tree overarching freedom tree tree of love tree of justice human rainbow blossoming
Unpublished endorsement : These poems are humane, passionate and wonderfully varied; at once visionary and restless, Burns is one of those fearless poets whose utter trust in honesty and clarity is, at times, breathtaking, at times heartbreaking. His work has been under-appreciated for too long; surely this collection will remedy that accident of time and place.
John Burnside
Unpublished endorsement :For the Living contains vital work – vital both because the poems are important, and because they are full of life. Richard Burns’ contribution to British poetry has been hard for many readers to judge these past 30-odd years: small presses, scattered publications, most of them out of print. But, all of a sudden, here they are together – the longer works of a poet of real distinction.
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