Richard Burns is an archaeologist of the time-capsuled human spirit. His poetry goes beyond virtuosity, for it reincarnates in words our communal lives entombed in memory.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
I keep learning from each new poem by Richard Burns. One feeling dominates all others when reading his work: awe.
JOHN BURNSIDE
What Richard Burns is doing is vital. In a Time of Drought marks him as someone who stands in a unique place in current British writing, a brave and inventive poet who is able to take risks, not for the sake of mere "experimentation", but in order to stay attuned to a wider European tradition. His work is compelling because he succeeds in taking us with him.
ZLATKO KRASNY
In the aftermath of the wars that destroyed Yugoslavia, through his explorations of pagan rituals in the Balkans, Richard Burns lifts European poetry at the beginning of the 21st century to new and inspired heights.
JEREMY HOOKER
Burns differs in poetic ambition and formal resourcefulness from the great majority of contemporary poets writing in English. He tackles subjects on a large scale: in In Time of Drought, the events in Yugoslavia between 1989 and 2001. Burns has a personal involvement in the subject, but he writes with the objectivity of the epic poet or seer. He does so with expert formal control, using traditional means but a kind of wordplay that is distinctively modern. His subject is historical and political violence, but he treats it by deploying ancient sources, especially folklore and custom, in which poets have, from the beginning, sought healing for the wounds of their people. Through contemporary events, Burns makes us aware of issues of life and death, of the life-giving and healing power of nature, and the forces of violence and destruction. I can think of no other contemporary English poet who so deploys the full resources of the poet’s traditional art, and brings them to bear on the actual events shaping and misshaping the modern world. Words used in the poem apply to its maker: Burns is "Praisesinger raised on this world’s suffering".
MARK PIRIE