You may know her name from her numerous 'Letters to the editor signed by Anne K. Lowe,' which have appeared in the AMANDALA and_ REPORTER_ newspapers over the years. Today for the first time the often outspoken and always opinionated American expatriate was unmasked. This morning the 80 year old who has lived in Belize for the past 19 years launched an anthology of 123 poems. She calls the vast collection, Liberated and Lowe told us it is a lifetime of poetry.
Anne K. Lowe, Poet
"It could appeal to anyone from nature lovers or a family of friends or even street dudes, some of the ones in the back I think will interest them."
Keith Swift,
Where do you get your inspiration from?
Anne K. Lowe,
"In my head. [Laughs.] Well you know it's things I see, for example let me show you here these things in the first part which all have to do with that but in the second part it's all about childhood memories, you know enjoying the playground and children that I know and things like that; Christmas, Independence Day, and even the Great Depression because I am 80 years old and I was alive when the Great Depression started back in 1930 and the stock market crash was October 1929."
Keith Swift,
So these poems span your lifetime?
Anne K. Lowe,
"Yeah they do. These are all, practically almost, about people or things that I experienced; for example this one is about what I experienced when there was prejudice against Japanese Americans."
Keith Swift,
Would you say this anthology is autobiographical?
Anne K. Lowe,
"Yeah it is in a way, not everyway."
Keith Swift,
It's your story?
Anne K. Lowe,
"Well it could be, the first part and then the last poem, Ticking of Eternity, is how I see how I'm going to die, like a leaf falling off a tree."
Liberated is the second release from the Ramos Publishing imprint. It is available at the Angelus Press for $15. Lowe has requested that the proceeds be donated to the University of Belize's Scholarship Fund. We say she requested because Lowe probably won't be here to oversee it. After 19 years living in Belize, Lowe will be leaving the quiet of rural Corozal for the beaches of Cancun, Mexico. There she says she hopes to write a book of Spanish poems.
7NEWS produced for broadcast by Alfonso Noble
Edited and Prepared for the internet by Keith Swift