Birth of a Debut Poetry Collection: Dear Planet
By Ann van Wijgerden, written January 2026
It was a week never to be forgotten. Not one, but TWO totally unexpected things happened. The first came during a family video call.
. . . . But, before that, a bit of context: My husband, Paul (Dutch), and I (English) live in the Philippines. About 18 years ago we founded a charity here called Young Focus. Currently, we work with a team of around 40 Filipino colleagues, and together we help provide education for just under 1,000 young people living in Manila’s slums. (For more info, here’s our website: youngfocus.org.)
Every now and again Paul and I can be heard declaring we have the best job in the universe. It is unbelievably rewarding seeing what a long-term difference a full education can make in a young person’s life. But, of course, the work does have its downsides, too: being far away from family (thank God for video calls!); the constant confrontation with the injustice of extreme poverty (poetry is my coping mechanism); the madness of Manila traffic (music soothes the soul).
Meanwhile, both of our grown-up children, together with their spouses, live in the
Netherlands. Every two weeks or so, the six of us have a video call, and it was during one of these calls that it happened. Our daughter was patiently waiting for each of us to have our turn sharing the latest, when finally there was a pause in the conversation, and she said quietly: “Actually, I have a bit of good news.” There was the slightest of catches in her voice, and instantly I had tears in my eyes, as if my body “knew” before I did. Moments later her words confirmed the amazing news of her pregnancy, the tears-of-joy tap got turned full on, and Paul and I were expecting our first grandchild!
The second totally unexpected thing happened only a few days later.
. . . . But, before that, another bit of context:
For almost 2 years I’d been trying to find a publisher for my first poetry collection, but to no avail, experiencing only silence or rejection emails—apart from the occasional positive rejection encouraging me to keep going with the manuscript submitting. What also stopped me giving up was a simple determination to find a home for these poems, my “babies,” where they could be together, because I’d become convinced they belonged together; they had a story to tell, they had a song to sing, and, as a chorus they needed to sing together, not scattered across the world in different mags, or shut up in silence on my laptop.
Just three days after hearing our daughter was pregnant, I received an email from a publisher based in the Netherlands responding positively to samples of poems I’d sent and requesting the full manuscript, soon after that, expressing serious interest in publishing.
In contrast to the unadulterated joy of earlier in the week, my emotions were mixed, to put it mildly. Rationally, I was telling myself that I should be feeling stupendously happy: FINALLYYYY a publisher! Instead, I found myself wrestling with such an attack of imposter syndrome and disbelief. Could this be real? Were they serious? Dare I go for it?
Very thankfully, it was around this time that I received help from an unexpected source. A business in Manila, which is supportive of the work of Young Focus, had organized an event for our students celebrating International Women’s Month. Four Filipino professional visual artists had been invited to speak about their experience making art. Some of us staff joined the event as well. It was so inspiring—not only for the students! It was just what I needed to hear, breathing courage into me, to “Embrace the journey,” as my new Filipino artist friends put it.
One week later I signed the contract with Fidessa Literary, and the publication adventure began.
Since then, (and yes, all within nine months) a book has been published, and a baby has been born. Were I to list the joys of grandmotherhood, I’d never shut up. So, here I’ll limit myself to sharing four of the joys I’ve experienced so far, having a debut poetry collection birthed into the world.
First, the cover. One of the things that had drawn me to Fidessa Literary at the very beginning was their book covers; these are works of art in themselves. And indeed, once the contract was signed, I discovered their strategy is to commission an artist to collaborate with the author to come up with a unique cover. Remember those four visual artists who so inspired me to snap out of my “imposter-syndrome-dip”?! Well, Fidessa agreed to my suggestion to ask one of them—the amazing painter Tara Soriano—to make the cover. To my delight, she said yes, and then it was even more exciting to see what Tara came up with. She totally got the theme, the feel of the book! (The imposter syndrome part of me was even satisfied: If purchasers of my book didn’t like the contents, at least they had a beautiful-looking item on their bookshelves!)
The second joy was the editing process. Seriously! Initially, I’d been a bit apprehensive of how this would go, though I’d been assured I’d have the final say if there were any disagreements. But it was everything I’d hoped it would be. Where there was a need for improvement, without telling me what to do, the editors encouraged me, pushed me to dig deeper, reach higher (“further up and further in”—The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis). It was a wonderful experience.
The third? You couldn’t make this up if you tried! The third joy is my cousin Juliet in New Zealand. (My late mother was a New Zealander.) Juliet was getting her debut poetry collection published over exactly the same months. It was so lovely to have someone, a companion along the same road of first-time publishing, comparing notes on anything from book covers, editors, book launches, to last-minute jitters.
Fourthly and finally, and most wonderfully unexpectedly of all, was Fidessa, the publisher deciding to partner with our charity Young Focus, sharing about our work on their website, donating a proportion of their book sale profits, attending a big communication event we had in the Netherlands (bringing a whole load of my books with a “pay what you like, 100% goes to Young Focus”), and now in 2026 starting a partnership with an Indy publisher in the Philippines, not only to launch my poetry collection here, not only to translate and publish Filipino writers for the broader market, but ALSO to collaborate with Young Focus, potentially for the students to access a platform for writing and publishing!
These days nothing can compete with watching the gorgeous face of my baby granddaughter breaking into a huge grin of pure joy. But witnessing this book-birthing process as it escalates and evolves into something so much more than getting poems published . . . it’s pretty darned delightful, too.
British by birth, Ann van Wijgerden lives in the Netherlands and the Philippines. She’s had nonfiction, poetry, and fiction published in magazines such as Orion, Orbis, The Sunlight Press, The Wild Umbrella, Queen’s Quarterly, as well as Yellow Arrow Publishing, and is a 2025 Best of the Net nominee. Her debut poetry collection Dear Planet was published by Fidessa Literary in July 2025. Ann cofounded and works for a nonprofit called Young Focus (youngfocus.org) in Manila.
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