Danez Smith is quite something. Or rather two, because the American poet likes to be addressed in the gender-neutral, or rather gender-plural plural form. A form of address not yet very common in Dutch, and thus avoided by everyone. Thursday night, 31 May, at the former ro theatre, now Theater Rotterdam - Witte de With, not a single personal pronoun fell around the young American's performance.
Which does not take away from the fact that Danez Smith made a deep impression during Poetry. You might already know them from YouTube, the phrases from Dear White America spoken in front of frenzied onlookers, but live it is really different. Smith has a charming appearance, a velvety voice, but at the same time can rage like a Methodist preacher.
Harness
And all without really antagonising people, at least here in the country, at an internationally renowned poetry festival like Poetry International. Most of all, the audience was deeply impressed. What a performance, what a presence, what a language. And yes, it is all true what Danez says.
Dean Bowen, one of the nominees for last year's C. Buddingh Prize for best debut, shows himself a kindred spirit to Danez Smith in many ways. Like Smith, his black identity is essential. His lyrics are convincing and, however soft he can sound, there is a beautiful danger in his delivery. Bowen can lash out, and he did, roaring and moving past the lectern towards the audience. Theatrical and effective, though it will naturally become a trick when repeated. People will then start relying on it.
Babyish
Solid effects, but of a very different order, are contained in the work of Mexican poet Alí Calderón. He grew up and still lives in a Mexico torn apart by drug cartels and corruption. It provides him with a fascination with the horror images seen every day in the newspaper and on TV. He also knows how to aptly describe them in his work. So intense, too, that interviewer and presenter Janita Monna got too angry when reading a poem that ends with a rotting baby corpse.
Is it all realism, identity and doom on such an evening? Far from it, I can reassure you. The theatre was sweltering, and it wasn't just because of the subtropical temperature. So many totally different works of poetry, so many totally different poets, from the whispering Ida Börjel from Sweden, to the biological/physical sky storming of the Canadian Christian Bök.
Bacteria
His magnum opus is a journey through stars and micro-organisms, encompassing everything and yet amusing, not just for fans of Star Trek. Now he is working on a bacterium, implanted with DNA built from one of his poems. The bacteria exists, turns out to be resistant, does not mutate and will survive the end of human civilisation without too much trouble. That is a fate many a poet would wish for. He succeeded.
That three men, one woman and one multigender have featured in this article so far does not do justice to the composition of the festival. Nor does it do justice to the fact that in poetry, at least in the Netherlands, women dominate. Janita Monna, who pronounced the traditional State of Poetry, argued that surely the glass ceiling in poetry was now really shattered. Of the past 10 winners of major poetry prizes, six were women, and four were men.
Seven
With Radna Fabias' prize, the stat improved even more: 7 out of 11. Of the four poets nominated, she stood out most for her personal style, which chafed and caressed in a surprising way, without shying away from the big questions. A dream debut you might say. In any case, the jury, consisting of Jeroen Dera, Charlotte van den Broeck and Antoine de Kom had fine words for it:
'Habitus shimmers. It is hard to say what is most oppressive in this collection: the tropical island, the Dutch to which the first-person narrator travels, or the categories that origin and destination project onto the lyrical self. Fabias makes this oppression palpable and, at the same time, she throws open such customary oppositions as 'white'-'black', 'man'-'woman', 'I'-'other' by ingeniously using a camera-like but distinctively lyrical voice that pulls open all perspectives and does not shy away from putting oneself and the other on the line. As distinctive as it is memorable, the raw outburst and dark-humorous tone are part of this. Fabias hits us repeatedly, slicing open the beast, daring to gross out 'niggers' who are obsolete white casts. This poetry is meaty, divinely bawdy at times - and breaks open Dutch poetry unparalleled, does away with safe verse.'
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