[Maryann Corbett]

This is awful news. I'm stunned. I'll truly miss her.
Let's remember her with more of her poems. There's a useful collection here:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/Ann%20D...ture%20Bio.htm

[Bill Greenwell]

I have just heard that Ann died in her sleep the night before last. What a loss. (The news was posted on social media by Sheenagh Pugh via Angela France.) RIP

[Jim Moonan]

.
Ugh. Such a gut-punch. Such sad news. Though I know she called many places her home, Annie made me feel Welsh every time I read her. I first experienced the art of sheep shearing through her eyes. I took her then just-published book Feeling Unusual to Mexico and mistakingly left it in the room where I was staying. She had signed it and written such a beautiful inscription. I felt such a loss then and I feel it again now. Her memory will be cherished by me and in me. Kick up your heels, Annie. There's more.


.

[Brian Allgar]

Oh, no! That's awful news!

[George Simmers]

That's terrible news. Can we convey our collective sympathies to her family?

[Roger Slater]

There is already a thread about this sad event. It might be useful to put all our comments there so they'll be in one place for the family's reference. Here is the existing thread.

[R. Nemo Hill]

.
.
.
"My worldly goods are few indeed;
two worn-out boots and a gunny-sack
though these are the only things I need
to dance to the edge of the world and back."
.
.
.

[Brian Allgar]

This is very sad news indeed. I am devastated.

[Sylvia Fairley]

I just can't believe it. She was so alive. Don't know what to say...

[Mary Meriam]

In an email just ten days ago, about a thorny computer problem, I wrote to Annie, "you are not alone" not knowing those words might resonate today. My favorite poem of hers shows how kind and loving she was. Lucky for us, her poems will live always, even though I'll miss her terribly.

Shadow
by Ann Drysdale

Shadow, I waited for you at the station,
watched you approaching before you saw me.
A stranger brought you down on a wheelchair,
pink coat unmissable in the glass lift,
emerging like a fairy-ex-machina
onto the overpopulated stage.

I was appalled at the smallness of you;
so much less of you than I was expecting.
For a moment before you spotted me
I felt the friendship in me run towards you
to wrap your small bones tight in your pink shadow,
feel with my fingers for the secret key
between sharp shoulderblades and turn it, turn it
till it met the familiar resistance,
then put you gently down, set you a-going,
clap with you happily as you repeated
the ceaseless twitter, the two-footed hop
of the happy child that is still inside
the little lady-doll whose fingers fidget
on the pale leather handbag in her lap.

And then the recognition. Your old smile —
“Ah, there you are!” And I was on my knees —
“Yes, darling, here I am” — beside the wheelchair,
my arms enfolding all there was, my hands
meeting in grief, because there is no key.