About the Author
“…This pen and paper is my way
of turning towards the emptiness.
This pen and paper, my way
of letting everything crash into me
(the ever-gaining tidal wave),
then looking to see what beauty might remain…”
Jeremy Palmer is a writer based in Geelong, Australia. With a background in music teaching and disability support work, he works as a Spiritual Care Clinician, in a hospital setting, offering a companioning presence and space of reflection to patients and their families, supporting them to tell their stories, explore meaning and make sense of their experience, particularly in Cancer Services and End of Life.
Hounded from a young age by questions of the nature of existence, Jeremy has spent over a decade immersed in the study of spiritual literature, contemplation, meditation, work with groups, teachers, therapists and relationships, exploring, unravelling the knots of his own heart and mind. His writing has naturally spilled over from this process.
His style is elegant and introspective, alight with personal inner journeying, the timeless search for meaning, flavoured with the imaginings of a hopeless romantic and a love-affair with the symbols of religion and myth.
In 2021, he completed a qualification in Bereavement Counselling, and currently is dreaming of cottages in the Cotswolds, patchwork hills and cobblestone streets.
Foreword to ‘Poems of Pilgrimage’, by Peter Roberts, 2020
Have you ever looked into the ocean through a glass bottom boat? I had the chance once, on a holiday in Fiji with my wife, back when we were newly married. Below the boat there was another world I knew to be there but couldn’t have fully imagined: another realm, heaving with life and colour and unfamiliar forms. I knew it was there but it wasn’t clear to me and I needed the glass in the bottom of the boat to see into its depths for myself.
In a way, my experience could be used to describe my personal response to Jeremy’s poems. Through his gifted use of words and images and his poetic imaginings, he clarifies and brings to life some of the latent, unformed notions lying beneath the surface of my own mind. There is a sense of the familiar about his images. They are about life and spirit and I recognise them.
In Fiji, I also remember young boys diving over the sides of boats, disappearing into the depths and coming up again to show us what they had found. A shell, a starfish, or a colourful stone; it was as if they were saying ‘Look at these things!’ ‘Look at these treasures!’—a grin of delight on their faces—before diving right back into the waters again. Jeremy does something similar for us. Through these pages, he holds out his hands and shares with us the treasures revealed to him on his travels. He invites us to travel with him too.
Through the art of his poetry, Jeremy ministers to us. The mysteries of some of life’s threshold experiences are brought to the surface and come more clearly into focus.
I have often been touched reading Jeremy’s poetry and I am pleased to have his previously published works in my collection. It is my hope that his writing will touch you too, that you will come to take a look through his glass bottom boat and let it take you wherever you need to go.
Peter Roberts
Music-Thanatologist, co-author of ‘The Harp and the Ferryman’