Silence of the Country

The poet, having been in Norway for six months, returns to her British Columbia home only to find she must write herself back into both her physical and psychic landscape and environment.

These poems are rites in the task of bringing the poet back home. With the poetic craft and precision of language she is noted for, Kristjana Gunnars takes us along on her re-entry into the sights, the sounds, the smells, the colours, the light, the landscape, of her west coast home. She also experiences occasional flashbacks to her exile in a faraway country, Norway, which is reminiscent of her own Icelandic home, and at the same time strikingly different.

Appearing at first to be deceptively small and simple, these poems, when pressed, reveal deepening layers of imagery and emotional complexity. It takes supreme skill to create powerful, satisfying statements in such brief poetic packages, but Kristjana Gunnars proves herself more than capable of meeting the challenge.