GratitudeMy sponsors and skilled, kindly helpersAs anybody who has ever done anything knows, without the love and support of others, nothing is possible.
This website exists as a result of two generous-hearted souls from Hogsback - the vibrant Maggie Verster, whose skills and enthusiasm have provided me with the actual set-up; and a lovely donor who wishes to remain anonymous, but whose radiant responses to Norman's and my poetry over the years have blessed my writing. This person and Maggie both dearly wished to see my book, Greater Matter, emerge into the light of day and I can only bend my head in deep thanks that this actually happened. There is an anonymous donor in Hogsback, from the St Patrick's Congregation, who helped sustain both my confidence levels and my grocery shopping during the writing of Greater Matter, by means of an unexpected, generous donation. I thank him/ her from the bottom of my heart. I thank Elise Burns-Hoffman and her husband, Paul Hoffman, respectively for expert professional advice generously given in friendship, and a free proofread. I thank Brian Walter and Jim Phelps for freely given help with publishing questions. I thank Brian Walter also for being so generous as to have done the layout for Sweet Nothings, and Marike Beyers, for her fine editorial attention and comments. |
My book, Greater Matter, tracking Norman's and my experience of his illness to death and beyond, is the direct result of the voices of others - friends and family - in sympathy with poems I initially published on Facebook, sharing these with a following of about thirty kind and listening people - some of whom I have never even met face to face!
Without their encouragement, prayers and holding I would not have had the strength to carry the experience I was going through. Their names are given in the Acknowledgments. I feel deep gratitude, too, for the profound soul experience that Norman allowed me to share with him, for entrusting himself so utterly to my instincts as he gave himself to me to help usher him to the gate of death – keeping faith with his words “our belonging together to the mortal end.” Huge thanks is due to my editors, Ed Burle, Jacques Coetzee and John van Wyngaard, without whose bright intelligences Greater Matter could not have become shareable on a wider scale. I also thank Michael Chomse for the gift of the portrait of Norman on the cover, and Mike Barwood, for his lovely cover design. Thank you, Flow Wellington, of PoeTree Publications, for your truly inspired layout, and your generosity and patience with me and my work. |
An experience, such as was documented in Greater Matter, frequently demands virtually unmediated contact with the spiritual realm.
I give thanks to the vast body of beings in that realm, from Norman’s and my Love-Angel to our Guardian Angels to the souls of ancestors and departed friends who stood by us, and still do, with soul power stringing us into contact with the Divine Powers that preside over all. I give thanks that I have been given the privilege of producing a book such as I have evidence is providing strength and enlightenment to many readers. Sweet Nothings turned out to build on spiritual experience grounded in the pristine natural surroundings of Hogsback and my home there at the time, High Riding. 'Grounded' is the operative word: I give thanks to mother earth for her gifts and for letting me engrave glimpses of those gifts into the pages that made Sweet Nothings the gem it is.
Then, in 2021, I was led gently onward, downstream, to the coast once more, to write and make art on the Garden Route. I was in Knysna just when the public mural, Kringe in die Bos, was being conceived, and was lucky enough to be allowed to participate both artistically and poetically. Just before I had to leave Knysna, I had the opportunity of collaborating poetically with an artist and a dancer. My thanks goes to all the human angels that facilitated these experiences!
My adventures continue, as I was led back to the East Coast in October 2022, where I reside in trust that I am meant to be exactly where I am. |
The Hogsback community and my garden
High Riding as a venue to consolidate the poems in Greater Matter as well as those contained in Sweet Nothings, gave me shelter, solitude and company in the form of plants, creatures, birds and insects. Not least, Norman's and my combined library formed a spiritual crucible I can only call divine. This crucible was grounded in the surrounding community: Hogsback's people, who looked after me during the grief process the book charts. Humbled by your care, I thank you. Greater Matter and Sweet Nothings could not have been born anywhere else but "on the mountain".
I would like to single out:
Norma and Derek Fivaz, for your steadfast, loving neighbourliness;
Felicity Wood and Mathew Blatchford, for your weekly pizza treats and friendship;
Gwyneth Lloyd, for your wisdom, your humour, your depth of insight into the spirit realm;
Tony Moody for standing by, for the walks, the listening , all your kindnesses;
Riccardo Smid-Magnanini, for supporting my poems by filming me reading them, and taking me to sites I could not have gone without your jeep;
Miki Kruger for your amazing massages and yoga classes;
Lydene Naylor, for the wine and laughs;
Michelle and Graham Russell for saying again and again, "We're here";
Nopenene Tyokini and Mnyamana Bala for doing what you could on my shoestring budget to care for the rampant garden.
I would like to single out:
Norma and Derek Fivaz, for your steadfast, loving neighbourliness;
Felicity Wood and Mathew Blatchford, for your weekly pizza treats and friendship;
Gwyneth Lloyd, for your wisdom, your humour, your depth of insight into the spirit realm;
Tony Moody for standing by, for the walks, the listening , all your kindnesses;
Riccardo Smid-Magnanini, for supporting my poems by filming me reading them, and taking me to sites I could not have gone without your jeep;
Miki Kruger for your amazing massages and yoga classes;
Lydene Naylor, for the wine and laughs;
Michelle and Graham Russell for saying again and again, "We're here";
Nopenene Tyokini and Mnyamana Bala for doing what you could on my shoestring budget to care for the rampant garden.
Then: to the Garden Route and back east
Thank you, Ed Low, for being there to make the move out of High Riding, and away from Hogsback, possible as well as survivable. Thank you for standing by me, every day - both in Plettenberg Bay, our gateway to the coast, and then, just over a year on, in the sanctuary of Brenton-on-Lake.
In the brief year in Brenton, I was thankful every day to the trees, birds, buck and other wildlife that surround us, protecting my humanity, cleaning away all dross.
Now, almost a year in the East Coast Resorts, trying to make a life here, there is a slow sense of a new foundation being laid securely, delicately, to support my daily, creative doings.
In the brief year in Brenton, I was thankful every day to the trees, birds, buck and other wildlife that surround us, protecting my humanity, cleaning away all dross.
Now, almost a year in the East Coast Resorts, trying to make a life here, there is a slow sense of a new foundation being laid securely, delicately, to support my daily, creative doings.
