The Showers of Blessings

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The Author’s Words

Open a New Door is a poetic peep into the lives of the poets, Kim Blades and Robbie Cheadle, both of whom live in South Africa.

The book is divided into four categories: God bless Africa, God bless my family and friends, God bless me and God bless corporate and work. Each part is sub-divided into the good, the bad and the ugly of the two poets’ experiences, presented in rhyming verse, free-style,haiku and tanka, in each of these categories and include colorful depictions of their thoughts and emotions.

The purpose of this book of poetry is encapsulated in the following tanka and haiku poems:
What drives me to write?
To share my innermost thoughts
The answer is clear
It’s my personal attempt
To make some sense of this world.

Inspiration blossoms
Like the unfurling petals
Of the Desert Rose

My Recommendation

Open a New Door by Robbie Cheadle and Kim Blades is a poetry collection with themes on the nature and life in Africa, the poets’ families and friends,their personal lives and the cooperate world. In each theme, the poets explored the good, the bad and the ugly. At the end of each poem, a short narrative gave the background or situation under which the poems were written. The poems are modern, free verse with rhymes and no rhymes. Each poem is easy to read in the length or one or two pages.

In the theme of life in Africa, Robbie Cheadle showed her compassion toward the poverty of African people young and old whose bread of the day depended on the begging, and their hope of life seemed to fade. Kim Blades described her mother raised her in a rural mountain village and learned to appreciate the nature,and concluded that the Love of Nature leads to the Love of Man. Among the cat family, I like Cheetah the best, I could visualize in Kim’s poems reflecting on the Cheetah’s running. The honey-badger, like most of the animals, protected the meal reminded of many nature documentary videos I’ve watched.

In the theme of the poets’ families, Robbie shared her joy of having a son with an amazing mind and her worry about another son’s physical disease; whereas Kim depicted her delightful interaction with her son. As a parent, I could relate the joyous and anxious emotions. 

In the theme of personal life, I appreciated Kim’s honesty expressing her emotion about her husband leaving her and her loneliness. Robbie’s poem “My Mind’s Eye” beautifully depicted the way she saw her life from childhood to adulthood and her acceptance of what life has brought her.

This poetry collection covers a wide range of personal experiences, observation and emotions. Many people could relate to them.

My Goodreads Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars

About the Author

Robbie Cheadle was born in London in the United Kingdom. Her father died when she was three months old and her mother immigrated to South Africa with her tiny baby girl. Robbie has lived in Johannesburg, George and Cape Town in South Africa and attended fourteen different schools. This gave her lots of opportunities to meet new people and learn lots of social skills as she was frequently “the new girl”. 

Robbie is a qualified Chartered Accountant and specializes in corporate finance with a specific interest in listed entities and stock markets. Robbie has written a number of publications on listing equities and debt instruments in Africa and foreign direct investment into Africa.

Robbie is married to Terence Cheadle and they have two lovely boys, Gregory and Michael. Michael (aged 11) is the co-author of the Sir Chocolate series of books and attends school in Johannesburg.Gregory (aged 14) is an avid reader and assists Robbie and Michael with filming and editing their YouTube videos and editing their books.

Contact Robbie Cheadle at:

Website: https://robbiesinspiration.wordpress.com/

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Robbie-Cheadle/e/B01N9J62GQ?ref=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15584446.Robbie_Cheadle

Twitter: https://twitter.com/bakeandwrite

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robbie.cheadle.7