Creative Writing Wordshops April 2026

Sounds of Silence

Whoever is silent touches the roots of speech (Rilke)

Are words silent when not spoken? There they lie these unwhispered shapes with gaps between them. In music, these are grace notes. Perhaps like the nuanced Inuit words for snow, or the 96 Sanskrit words for love, strange we own one word for the many kinds of silences that vary from hostile to silence when contemplating the divine, (Wordsworth’s ‘the holy time is quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration’). to the silence of being alone in nature and listening to the sounds.

Then listening to the subliminal sounds of the blood coursing through, rising at pulse points, The beat of the heart, the sound of the breath. The Buddhist koan (riddle) ‘What is the sound of one the hand clapping?” Cicero’s ‘Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.’ Rumi’s ‘Sing to me in the silence of your heart and I will rise up to hear your triumphant song.’

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