"Further than the Blood contains only the briefest excerpts from Cold Mine, Shownman, Travelling Mercies. Perhaps Birchard will be persuaded to put those series back together... His vivid, offbeat, casually learned and masterly language is refreshingly modest, individual-unfashionable. I'm not sure there's a poet with a better ear, and I'm also unsure if another has a feeling for how intelligence moves within and between lines that is any way superior." -David Miller.

He has been thus persuaded, as has Shearsman.