Alí Calderón has written quite a body of work, but I did not hear much of it during my stay at Poetry International. However, the poem 'Democracia Mexicana' did come along three times. A formidable poem, as it ends with a rotting baby corpse, so not for the soft-hearted among us. Democracia Mexicana is Calderon's hit poem. Like pop singers can make a hit...
Welcome to the culture press podcast. Episode I don't know how many. Today, once again, I am keeping my mouth shut, because the floor belongs to the new poets of the Netherlands. I saw and heard them on Thursday, 31 May 2018, during poetry international. The evening was dominated by the presentation of the Cees Buddingh Prize. The prize for the best Dutch poetry debut of 2018....
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, fell around the...
The lectern. The lectern. The paper holder, if possible with its own light, which, shining upwards, draws stern shadows of the reading glasses on the poet's face. It is the kind of necessary evil that every poetry or literature festival has to deal with. Only the powerpoint is missing to make it a boring seed onion conference. Poetry International Festival Rotterdam has in...
When you first see Lenny Oosterwijk, you don't think: ha, a gallery owner. Somehow, you expect a more posh look with that. But the man who founded Galerie Untitled in 2011 in Rotterdam Noord comes from a different background. Lenny Oosterwijk, Self-Portrait He is a photographer and art director and worked for a time at the...
What lies on the ground, spread over a white sheet? Hard to determine. Shrapnel? Aircraft parts? Battered remains? Upon entering A Tale of a Tub, the impression is unsettling, and slightly overwhelming. A crime scene, but unclear who, what or where it is about. They appear to be plants, but magnified and cast in bronze. But that see...
Jan Baeke has been associated with Poetry International as a programmer for many years. In this podcast, I talk to him about the programme and the theme of this 49th edition: The Nation of Poetry. It's about nationalism, of course, but also about identity. And about what role poetry plays in that. And then, of course, it's not primarily about folk songs. We...
Poets Danez Smith and Patricia Lockwood once broke the internet with their virtuoso wordplay. Smith with a frothy tirade about ineradicable racism and police brutality in America (Dear White America) and Lockwood with a heartbreaking/funny poem about her rape (Rape Joke). Both have outgrown their hypes. They have secretly been doing a fantastic job for years, using Twitter, YouTube, paper and stage...
'There would be a difference between paper poems and poems that only fit into a recitation. I don't think it's a good poem in either case then. A good poem you can read well, and also reread, but it also fits very well in a performance.' Poet Anne van Winkelhof has clear views on what makes poetry good poetry....
On Thursday 9 June 2016, Marieke Rijneveld received the Netherlands' highest poetry prize: the C. Buddingh Prize.
Aase Berg from Sweden, Luis Chaves from Costa Rica and Sinéad Morrissey from Northern Ireland read their full selection of festival poems. Translations into Dutch and/or English will be projected directly along. The readings will be preceded by an introduction to the poets' work. Presentation: Feline Streekstra. Ever since her first collection Hos Rådjur (1997), Aase Berg has been writing direct, hard and compressed poetry full of...
Is the language of poetry still free from ideology and manipulation? Or is it nonsense to think that poetic language escapes framing, the ideological loading of words? That is the main theme of this year's Poetry International poetry festival, which kicks off on Tuesday 7 June.
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