Villiers's lyrics fill the soul with love, humility and depth . . . a superb writer who reinvigorates personalized memories or a similar ambiance drawn from the verses depicted in subtle implications that embody hope, sympathize with sorrow along with exuberance and triumphs . . . genuinely a poet who takes life to the fullest. Readers will revel in Villiers's Petals of Vision that will imprint in the memory, plus relish each stance while absorbing every phrase until the end - Hadel S. Ma'ayeh, Huffington Post Passionista and author of From the Heart: A Journey of Love.
Villiers's new collection Petals of Vision offers deeply felt poetry in a wide variety of forms and covering subjects. Here are sonnets that chart the highs and lows of human love, short lyrics inspired by nature, and also some delightful 'nonsense poems' voiced for different animals - for example, the excellent and satiric Parliament of Owls. There are many moving little touches and poems that are, in his words "Petals of grace" that "Spread blessing/Unseen by the wider world" - Reverend Malcolm Guite, Ph.D., Chaplain and Supervisor, Girton College, Cambridge University.
In this wonderful second collection of poems, Villiers again sings "the universe into ... rhyme" and weaves nature with religious allusion in suggested tales of love's loss and gain. Here are deft and lucid vignettes, sturdy poems of yearning, new found resolve, and - on occasion - humor too - Gerard Loughlin, Ph.D., Professor of Theology and Religion, Durham University.
About the AuthorChristopher Villiers is a British theologian and freelance writer who has written about religious matters for a wide variety of publications, both academic and popular. He holds the Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Theology from Durham University, United Kingdom, with a specialization in the history of Christian doctrine. His postgraduate thesis addressed the Divine impassibility in the theology of Saint Cyril of Alexandria, with reference to modern theological debates on divine impassibility deriving from biblical, historical and philosophical scholarship.
Villiers is a practicing Catholic with an interest in ecumenism, particularly in relation to the Eastern Orthodox churches. He writes on a regular basis for the ecumenical theological journal Sobornost. Villiers is the author of Sonnets From the Spirit (2015), a book of illustrated biblical poetry for Lent. He is also the winner of the 2008 Jean Cowling Prize in Theology and the first prizewinner of the 2015 Sonnets for Shakespeare Poetry Award.