Book with No Back Cover     by Richard Burns Published by David Paul Books Pub. Date: 2003 ISBN: 0954054237 List Price: £7.99 buy now directly from the publisher Free Shipping Worldwide

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Two beginnings and a middle but no end Following the I Ching and the Kabbalah, Richard Burns' new poems focus on nature and light, love and justice, grief and celebration. Burns does not flinch from confronting injustice and horror, whether man-made or natural. Nor does he draw back from questioning death and challenging despair. Yet joy and hope resonate throughout this collection, tumbling and rising into poem after poem. This is a book that flows in waves. It cannot be concluded, only continued.

"Book With No Back Cover is a work of art whose fascinating, closely woven structure draws the reader in like a conspirator. Richard Burns continues his long and restless journey as a poet. This, his best book so far, has a strange and compelling power." -Anthony Rudolf

Richard Burns was born in London into a family of musicians. His perspectives combine English, Mediterranean, Jewish, Slavic, American and Oriental influences. He founded and ran the first international Cambridge Poetry Festival. He has received the Keats Memorial Poetry Prize, the Yeats Club Prize and the H. H. Wingate / Jewish Quarterly Award. He has lived in Greece, Italy, the USA and the former Yugoslavia. A poet of many voices, he deals equally with historical and political material, with inner worlds, and with relationships and everyday life.

"Richard Burns has consistently drawn on non-English poetic traditions. In this ingeniously constructed book, he makes original use of I Ching and the Kabbalah. The poems encompass horror and joy, pleasure and pain, the elements and the angels. There is no closure. The key is openness." - Jeremy Hooker