Poets

Francois Hoon was born on the 18th of January 1982 in Pretoria, South Africa. He grew up in a middle-class suburban household and a reformed traditional Christian culture. Christianity had for a big part of his life been a good set of intellectual beliefs and morals to hold onto as a good way of life. A bunch of nice but not really very practically realistic stories in a Book that you read and then try to get a lesson from for your life.

In 1996 at the age of 14 he went to a youth Christian gathering and for the first time experienced the God of the Bible to be alive, and to be a Person with whom individual and personal interaction was possible. He gave his life and his heart to this God and this new interaction caused a new source of life and joy to well up inside of him.

Nine months later, in March 1997, he wrote his first poem, The Rose, to a girl he had a crush on. In that same year while praising God once, he received in a brief moment a vision from Him, which he felt compelled to express in writing. This was the first time he felt satisfaction in poetic expression, and it gave birth to his second poem, and the one to usher in the rest, One Night.

Through highschool the guidance and support of an English teacher encouraged him to continue writing and to further explore the art and expression of poetry. It was in these years that his love and appreciation for classic poetry came to fruition, and poets like Matthew Arnold, William Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas ope..