Two new books you may find inspiring: an anthology from the Quaker
poet Alice Beer and a biography of Theodore Rigg, a Quaker scientist.
Rigg, who died in 1972, was a New Zealand (but born in West Yorkshire)
soil scientist. In ww1 Rigg served with the Friends War Relief
Committee in France, Albania and Montenegro, and in Russia during the
revolution.
After pioneering work on Maori soils he retired and wrote on Quaker
history in Nelson, NZ.
His story is told through family letters and scientific papers by his
daughter Helen, also a Quaker and a scientist, and clerk of Wellington
Monthly Meeting.
Alice Beer is still very much alive and writing. She studied
psychology in her native Vienna before settling permanently in
England. After her husband died, poetry and the Quaker world
beckoned. She is an Elder at her meeting in Leicester. She has
published mainly in small poetry magazines and her second anthology
Talking of Pots, People and Points of View has just been published.
The editor, who has just experienced yet another birthday, alighted on
this verse from Alice's collection.


On Growing Old

Like mice in the night
the years that pass are gnawing
at our life ahead.

Bit by bit the paths
our life takes seem narrower,
steeper and more rugged.

The ruts get deeper,
the woods more dense, the bright star
before us brighter.

*
A Quaker Scientist (The Life of Theodore Rigg) published for New Zealand YM by
Beechtree Press Roturua, available from Penelope A. Dunkley, P.O. Box
6005, Rotorua 3215 NZ. £9 inc.p&p.
Alice Beer's book is available from editor@poetrypf.co.uk or call
07850 537489 at £4.50