From George Herald article, June 2010:
Last week I was, once more, going through a pile of poetry anthologies which I discovered. Among them a thin red book, titled Elizabeth Sings, caught my attention. On the title page was written: The collected writings of Elizabeth du Preez. I paged through it, saw that it was a collection of poems and short sketches. Many of the poems, and stories, were about nature and horses, were quite well written and were all dated from 1950 to 1953.
There was also a small section titled Biblical Poems with a note explaining that those poems were discovered, posthumously, in Elizabeths Sunday School notebook. A few lines, from the poem Jesus on the Cross, caught my attention:
And the things that He said to the people, that He
taught them before He died
So angered those Pharasaic bigots that they
ordered Him crucified
Well it is done, three crosses stand starkly
against the sky
Is this the way now, I ask you, for the Messiah
of Israel to die?
The poem was dated March 1953.
I paged back to the Introduction to the book and read the following: Elizabeth Suzanne du Preez, was born a healthy baby on 16th November 1939. She died on 24th May 1953.
The poem I had just read, as well as all the other wonderful poems and stories were written by Elizabeth from 1950 to 1953 at ages of 11 to 13 years old. What I discovered as I read on was even more amazing. When Elizabeth was only eleven months old she contracted poliomyelitis and was only able to walk after her second birthday. By her sixth year she contracted encephalitis, a form of infantile paralysis. This disease left her completely deaf, almost blind and unable to walk by herself. She had just turned six.
Despite her disabilities, Elizabeth read and read and read and started writing. Holding a pencil was very difficult so she taught herself to type with one finger, her face centimeters away from the typewriter in order to see the keys. It is said that she would write a complete poem in her head, to the last comma and full stop, then type it out without changing a single letter or punctuation mark.
Elizabeths last writing was a letter to her aunt in May 1953. Shortly afterwards she suffered a third attack of encephalitis and passed away on 24th of May. She was 13 ½ years old.
Pages: 83
Hardcover
Maskew Miller, 1957
Book: Good condition; sticky tape residue inside covers and eps; some mild foxing; covered in loose plastic wrapper
B123
