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Graham Burchell is pleased to announce the release of two new books!
Vermeer's Corner published by Foothills Publishing, and Ladies of Divided Twins published by Erbacce Press. Signed copies of both books are available from the author at www.gburchell.com .
Vermeer’s Corner
Poet’s Statement
"I bought a small book of Vermeer’s paintings at a bargain price. I actually started reading it, and not just looking at the pictures. I was an art teacher for many years, but I knew very little about Johannes Vermeer. Nor does anyone else it seems. I was fascinated, firstly by the enigmatic nature of the artist and his work and secondly by the stunning beauty of his paintings. Hardly anything is known about Vermeer. He has thirty-five known paintings of which one is stolen, missing from a museum in Boston. Women and more significantly, women wearing pearls is an intriguing aspect of his work that seems to be largely about the place and plight of women in 17th century Holland. I became so absorbed by the artist, his work and his time that I resolved to write a poem about each one of his paintings. In all of the poems the speaker is a character (or in some cases – the character) in the work. This was often the woman or one of the women posing. Sometimes the woman was his wife or his daughter either talking directly to the reader or to Vermeer. Occasionally the speaker is a man. In two of the poems ‘The Procuress’ and ‘The Music Lesson’, the man in question is Vermeer himself."
From the book:
MILKMAID
The Milkmaid – c.1658 – 60
I was going to do this in an accent
west country English
lots of ooz and arrz as burred
as sharp as blackberry thorns
or night cooled cider from a clay jug
all pickled pronouns and liberties
taken with doing words
dressed like a gert blue tit I be
what d’you wanna be painting I fer
down ‘ere with me serving bits
and pieces etcetera
but anyway I am Dutch and
you said you want to do me
with more dignity
there is grace in that simple
quiet act of pouring milk you said
strength in the straight white fall
and angle of my concentration
that makes me feel special
like a priest preparing communion
milk the wine
sincere food of devout thought
bread in a basket bread broken
rough-chin crusts snagging morning light
like chickens shaking rain
and you made this simple room
with its cool harvest tang
with its basket pail foot-warmer
nail-hooks and holes look special
the wall lit as a gargantuan pearl
I wrote it down somewhere yes
opalescent you called it
even painted a thin milk line
down my head and back said
it gives me monumental grandeur
said I was the embodiment
of the spiritual maid
and for all that sir
whatever it means I thank you
Vermeer's Corner
is a 56 page hand-stitched paper book with spine.
£6.99
Ladies of Divided Twins
Poet’s Statement
From a second hand bookshop in Houston, Texas, I purchased a visually stimulating book about the similarities and differences between Eastern Siberia and Alaska - "Divided Twins" as it was called. The photographer and the poet that had produced it had filled this volume with wonderful anecdotes and glorious photographs of the people and places. I was drawn to the images of women, particularly the old Siberian ladies (babushkas) wrapped in layer upon layer of protection from the bitter cold. After a lifetime, the unforgiving weather of these northern lands had taken a toll on their faces. It also occurred to me at some point a little earlier, that some of my poetry had been about lonely unmarried women. I have no real notion of why I did this, only that I enjoyed the inventiveness, the black humour of distorted reality. It was the seed of this collection of poems about encounters with, and perceptions of, my opposite gender. These poems are my expressions of fabled or real encounters with the opposite sex either as family, wives, girlfriends, artistic influences, mere glancing blows or faces staring out at me from a book.
From the book:
THE KISS
(After Frida Kahlo)
Three photos snatched of Frida
and her onion-waist husband
in the first I see delicacy
she is far too thin a rod
I am reminded of the bus she rode
that broke that broke her back
a year later she is snapped
at the Golden Gate Bridge proud
confident hair glistening
head erect hands on hips
and then the third mi eleccion
my nonpareil a stolen moment
a nimble lens to snatch a kiss
upon a scaffold in Detroit
in this captured beat
she is that quiet energy
in a brook a given angel
swan-neck reaching to trust
for a moment of love and pride
planted on the lips on the face
of her onion-waist man
for his art and far-reaching fame
some tenderness snapped
amid the layers of pain
Ladies of Divided Twins
40 pages £4.99
Graham Burchell Press Release of two new poetry books
Submitted by Anonymous on Friday, May 16, 2008 (18:40:41) (243 reads)
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