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 Susan Cook-Jahme is a published poet, author and illustrator. Known mainly for her humorous articles and stories about her personal experiences encountered whilst living in Africa, her award winning poetry reflects heartfelt nostalgia of the places, people, flora and fauna of her homeland. Susan’s illustrations and photographs are often commissioned by publishers in U.S.A., U.K. and Africa. She was born in Southern Rhodesia and has seen the transition from the Federation of Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Southern Rhodesia, to Rhodesia, to Zimbabwe-Rhodesia to the now Zimbabwe. She has lived in Malawi and travelled extensively throughout Central and Southern Africa and spent seven years living in and around the Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar. Presently she lives in the Western Cape of South Africa with her Wild Life Artist husband Graham. They have two daughters, Kerry and Taryn who live and work in the U.K.
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MY ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
- 2003- www.perigee-art.com Perigee: Publication for the Arts, published
“Bushveld Hollow Hour” & “Victim of an African Regime” 3rd edition Perigee. - 2003 – www.voicesnet.com , competition finalist “Cape Malay Quarter” and selected
to appear in their International Poetry bi-annual anthology, USA. - 2003 – South African Christian Association, “The Crucifixion” published in
their anthology “The Gift of Time.” - 2003 – www.poetry.co.za competition finalist. Included “Victim of an African
Regime” in their anthology “Shattered Pillars”
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MY NEWS:
My latest poetry anthology African Dust on the Soles of My Feet, is for sale on my alternate website: www.authorsden.com/susancookjahme
Here is a review of this e-Book by Laurel Johnson of the Midwest Book review:
African Dust on the Soles of My Feet
by Susan Cook-Jahme
ISBN pending
109 pages at 10.00 e-book
www.authorsden.com/susancookjahme
In her second full length book of poetry, Susan Cook-Jahme once again shows us her African homeland through loving eyes. Adding dimension to this book you will find breathtaking oil on canvas paintings done by the poet and her husband, Graham. The overall effect cannot be adequately described in a review. I'll give you several random excerpt samplings to demonstrate her gift.
"Victoria Falls" extols that ancient wonder:
Sharp intake of breath
At the beauty
Of roaring mists that swell
And swirl up into the sky...
Filming the skin
Like a lover's caress.
In "Star Gazer" we see a goat herder, the same today as he has been for millennia:
I am the king of all terrain,
That undulates far and wide,
My workers hands my pride,
The shuttered night my sanctuary,
A humble goat-herd dressed in hide....
"Domain of My Memories" is a paean to the poet's homeland:
Softly in languid teasing, you beckon,
Rolling Country, you are the abode of my memory,
You remain barefoot with childhood innocence and laughter,
Defying all poetic imagining with your truth,
I drink in the spirit of your eternal essence, my Motherland.
"The Elephants Final Walk" was one of my favorites:
There is a far place unknown to man
Beneath shaded canopies of tall acacia trees,
Standing silent sentinel on mud greased banks
Congealed in fetid weed and reed,
Where these great beasts walk their last mile...
"Hamba Kahle" means "Go Safely", which will make a fitting final excerpt:
For you who have drunk deeply
Of the waters of this African land,
Will find an aching thirst to quench,
And return to drink deeply of it once again.
This review has barely scratched the surface of what you will find in African Dust on the Soles of My Feet. The poet writes of love and death, friendship and passion, sorrow and injustice. For those who love poetry, or have a certain curiosity about Africa, Susan Cook-Jahme's latest book is a must read.
Laurel Johnson
Midwest Book Review
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MY FAVORITE LINKS:
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MY RESIDENCE INFO:
City: l'Agulhas
State/Country: South Africa
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BOOKS PUBLISHED:
 African Dust on the Soles of My Feet
by Susan Cook-Jahme
[self-published]
From beginning to end, this is one of the most inspiring and refreshing books of poetry I've read in a long time. The poetry is divided into three section: Dawning; Twilight; and Solitude.
It begins with “A Wistful Ache for Africa” :
Wistful ache of the love
For the tawny plains
Surrounding highlands
That thrust up,
Touching the skies
Under hot sun clad days.
Susan next takes you through the beauty of Africa with her works: Victoria Falls; Whispering Cape Wind; African Night; Mother Nature’s Loom; African Spirit Drums; Night Noises of the Veld; and Sunrise on Cool Sands.
She gives you an intimate look into her life with her works: For Michelle; Makiwa’s All Look the Same; Jaunty Jim; The Farmer’s Children; The Old Colonial Bed; Solitude of the Bush Camp; and We Once Had A Farm In Africa.
Her bold strokes of pen about the worst of Africa ring loudly and makes your heart ache in the works: Fist of War; In the Camps: Poacher’s Message; and Victim of the African Regime.
And, Susan brings you back to the beauty and the hope she has for her land with her works: Domain of My Memories; Gandhi Told Me; Skies Over Lake Malawi; and her inclusion of A Bushman’s Song
“The day we die a soft breeze shall blow
& wipe out our footprints in the sand.
When the Wind grows silent,
Who will tell the timelessness…?
That once we walked this way
…In the Dawn of Time”
Each of her works brings alive what Africa means to her from her verses to her artwork. Each pages gives you an insight to her dedication to her homeland, the trials and tribulations of the political growing pains of Africa, it’s richness and it’s poverty. This is really a book to keep and reread for it’s beauty and sensitivity.
Reviewers Footnote: For the past twenty years, Susan and her husband have been passionately committed to animal wildlife conservation. This has resulted in being actively involved with the “Save The Rhino Conservation”, working on the Black Rhino Relocation Project that was carried out in the Zambezi Valley. As artists, they have often donated paintings and graphics to fund-raising auctions to benefit wildlife conservation projects. One such exhibition staged in the Harare Sheraton for the “Zimbabwe Wild Life Organisation,” resulted in donating the proceeds from eighty of their artworks to the Cecil Kop Nature Reserve in Eastern Zimbabwe. The funds went towards purchasing breeding stock and starting a wild life conservation educational school for local children.
Reviewer: Elizabeth Lucas-Taylor, author/poet
http://www.authorsden.com/elizabethlucastaylor
elizabethlucastaylor@earthlink.net
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