In a Time of Drought

For more than twenty years, Richard Burns has maintained a close involvement with life, culture and politics in the Balkans. He lived and worked in former Yugoslavia at a crucial time, between 1987 and 1991, immediately before the wars that broke the country apart. Out of this has come the book-length poem In a Time of Drought, first published in Serbian in 2004, and recipient of the international Morava Poetry Prize in 2005.

Drawing on pan-Balkan pagan rainmaking ceremonies that survived into the last quarter of the twentieth century, Richard Burns has fashioned a poem which makes a plea for international regeneration and individual creativity. The key figure is the Balkan rainmaiden, who goes by many names but is best known as Dodola or Peperuda. In Richard Burns’s poem, this peasant or gipsy girl dressed in leaves takes on an ancient mythological authority and a wholly modern moral presence. Heiress of the goddeses and gods of ancient Europe, sister of Persephone and bride of the thunder god, in the wake of waste and war she is an incarnation of hope and renewal.

In a Time of Drought is closely structured numerologically. It has seven sections, each divided into seven stanzas. In addition to the poem, the book contains a postscript, and a detailed glossary, with notes and references.

This is the first of Richard Burns's three books of poems based on  Balkan themes and motifs. The second is The Blue Butterfly (Salt 2006). The third, entitled Under Balkan Light, is in preparation.

Richard Burns has written several essays on the Balkan rainmaking customs. The first of these to have been published, 'Dodola and Peperuda' (in Poetry Review, London, 2006), is available here.