{"id":5838,"date":"2014-02-24T22:48:43","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T22:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peakepro.com\/?p=5838"},"modified":"2014-02-24T22:48:43","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T22:48:43","slug":"andrew-philip-reviews-the-silence-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robertpeake.com\/archives\/5838-andrew-philip-reviews-the-silence-teacher.html","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Philip Reviews The Silence Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"
My friend the Scottish poet Andrew Philip<\/a> wrote a review of The Silence Teacher<\/a><\/em><\/a> that I just discovered tonight. His perspective is one I greatly respect–not only because I hold him in such high esteem as a poet, but because he, too, has walked grief’s road after losing an infant son.<\/p>\n It must have therefore been as hard in some ways for him to read the collection as it was for me to write it. Yet I can also think of no one better equipped to understand, from the inside out, the difficult task of attempting to make art, and thereby make meaning, from such loss.<\/p>\n There were many dark nights of self-doubt for me. These poems often felt simultaneously necessary and impossible to write. Grief is such difficult terrain to navigate honestly without fears of self-indulgence. Yet Andrew himself has done this masterfully, and I rate his own poems about his son among the most moving I have read. <\/p>\n It is therefore greatly affirming to see him write that The Silence Teacher<\/a><\/em> represents “the kind of volume I wish I had written” since, through his support, encouragement, and fine example, in a way he did.<\/p>\n