I have officially begun the process of editing the anthology, bringing to an end the composition phase of the collection. A set of fifty-two lyric nature poems is the result, which I refer to as ‘idylls’, a paean to the Overberg (a rural region in the Western Cape province of South Africa), its creatures, flowers and landscapes.

The first poem (‘Autumn’) was written in 2012, followed by fifty-plus poetic sketches between 2017 and 2019, developed into complete works these past five years. Now, I have begun preparation for a rough draft print—a ‘chapbook’, as it is also known—refining each poem and assessing its rightness for the anthology.

During the composition phase, I kept every version of every stanza of every poem as it evolved from sketch to poem in lengthy documents with tens of variations per stanza. My task is now to extract the final stanzas and assemble them as individual poems onto individual pages, which I can then arrange and rearrange.

Once I have done this, I can create the above-mentioned rudimentary booklet. It is with this draft volume that I shall work thenceforth to determine which poems to include, the order in which they should appear and so forth. For so long have the stanzas existed only on the screen; at last, they take physical form!