Month: januari 2018

Driëen
Ik ben een vader. Check. Ik ben een zoon. Check. Ik ben een heil- ige geest. Check. Ik ben de weg, de waarheid en het leed Check mate.
Reading: Lives by Derek Mahon
We travel to Northern Ireland. Derek Mahan (b. 1941)'s poetry has been compared to Louis MacNeice and W.D. Auden. Some critics have called it 'too controlled'. I found this poem worth reading, with an attribution to yet another famous Irish poet: Lives (for Seamus Heaney) First time out I was a torc of gold And ...
Reading: Kanheri Cave by Dom Moraes
Dom Moraes (b. 1938-2004) was an Indian poet, widely regarded as foundational figure in Indian English literature. He was Catholic and struggled with alcoholism. I read Kanheri cave, I think it gives a good impression of the man's writing: Kanheri cave Over these blunted, these tormented hills, Hawks hail and wheel, toboggan down the sky. ...
Reading: Turns by Tony Harrison
Britain's leading theater and television poet is Tony Harrison (b. 1937), who is celebrated of the twentieth century's true working class poet. He is a translator, director, playwright who says that all is implied in the job description: poet. I read 'Turn' about his passed father, where the class consciousness becomes visible: Turn I thought ...
Het echte leven
Toen ik een week geleden op Schiphol arriveerde na een lange vlucht van vier films, bekroop me een gevoel van milde nostalgie en opgewonden herkenning. Ik hoorde weer mijn moedertaal; ik zou met nagenoeg alle mensen in de aankomsthal een gesprek kunnen aanknopen en genieten van die heerlijke illusie dat de subtiele kwinkslagen die ik ...
Reading: Dawn revisited by Rita Dove
Rita Dove (b. 1952) was the youngest Poet Laureate in the nineties and well-known to the American public. She has written a lot of longer, mythology-inspired stuff, but for our bric-a-brac anthology I read a shorter verse: Dawn revisited Imagine you wake up with a second chance: The blue jay hawks his pretty wares and ...
Reading: The Way Things Work by Jorie Graham
Jorie Graham (b. 1950) is another famous North American poet with a unique style. Pulitzer Prize 1996. Here is The way things work: The way things work is by admitting or opening away. This is the simplest form of current: Blue moving through blue; blue through purple; the objects of desire opening upon themselves without ...