Silence Sings

This collection of poetry provides a delightful journey through Chris Irving's poetry. It covers a wide range of subject matter and employs a number of different styles. Many of them were inspired through a deep immersion in nature and capture precious moments in lyrical terms. Such poems come from a place of silence, a depth of stillness from which perception is clear and complete. The poet's love affair with nature and the ecstasy he experiences when enraptured by its beauty shines through these poems.Whether the subject is the expression of a perception or insights into human behaviour these poems have a simplicity that belies their profundity. There is a sense in which the eternal shines through some of these poems and uses time-laden words to hint at that which is timeless.Others are playful, even frivolous, an experiment to see how certain words will dance together and in this, they are like improvised music, a spontaneous spray of words like notes from a trumpet or splashes from a merrily bubbling fountain. Occasionally there is a humourous poem and even the odd nonsense or semi-nonsense poem that invites the reader to project their own meaning into it. Although this poet is also a philosopher these poems, with one or two exceptions, are mercifully free from the philosophical conundrums that burden the mind. These are poems which spring from an open heart and a mind that knows and treasures silence.