Reviews

Reviews of Ladies of Divided Twins

Graham Burchell manages to set a scene of ambitious awareness and craft in his latest collection. His words haunt us with clarity and suggestion. Stark and emotionally rich. This book is a sublime
addition to art and its author a notable voice in contemporary poetry.
Lisa Zaran; Contemporary American Voices

Like Glowworms in July, Graham Burchell's poems flash their brief lightnings and draw us near. In Ladies of Divided Twins, his alternately sad, brilliant, torn, and tantalizing women are presences who strike fire with every glance.

Charles Ades Fishman Author of Chopin's Piano, Country of Memory and others.

Graham Burchell tells us that "this party is over," but for those of us who absorb these strong poems, the party is something we will eagerly return to again,  and again.

L. Ward Abel; Author of Jonesing for Byzantium and Peach Box and Verge.

Burchell is unafraid to write his poems using variations of meter and with stanzas ranging from triplets to quintains to free verse to help capture the essence of the woman he is 'expressing'. The styles used are as varied as the women themselves, which both
refreshes the text and helps to honour the importance of the message being conveyed. These women, Burchell seems to be saying, are organic creatures and will not be confined within the cage of repetitious four-line stanzas. The poetry should be moulded to who they are, and not the other way around. Elle's Competitive Nature, one of the strongest poems in the collection and perhaps the
longest, is written in a series of broken stanzas that scatter across two pages as we learn of her difficulties that come from having 'breasts and brain' too big for her body. Elle, 'strong willed yet brittle' has a strong fear of commitment, pregnancy, life, death. We emerge from the poem with a strong sense of this woman, aided in no small manner by the way in which it was composed, all jagged stanzas and broken lines.

Damian Kelleher for Four Volts Magazine
(Click HERE to read Damian's full review)

Reviews of Vermeer's Corner

These poems, like Vermeer's paintings, seek to capture close, intimate moments in the lives of
ordinary people. Burchell's language creates flowers without being flowery, and remains consistent to the intellect, expectations and emotional abilities of his subjects without falling into the trap of condescending to his characters.

Damian Kelleher for Four Volts Magazine
(Click HERE to read Damian's full review)