kamiel79

Reading: A Found Photo by Jacques Réda

Jacques Réda (b.1929) is a French poet and lover of jazz. His poetry often conveys small and innocent scenes. I read a poem about an old photo, wonderfully translated by Jenny Feldman: A Found Photo One day the three of us out in this boat. The day black and white but clearly summer For in ...

Meditation on Thinking

We sit and breathe calmly. We observe that we are thinking and in a first, gentle, move, admit that it is a concept that will always evade our definition. We just think. The ability to distinguish it from not-thinking requires a precise definition, hence in other words we are always-already caught in the realm of ...

Reading: In Jerusalem by Mahmoud Darwish

Today I read a poem by Mahmoud Darwish (1942-2008) in a translation by Fady Joudah. Darwish was born in Galilee, in a village that doesn't exist anymore. He lived in exile in Beirut and Paris and published a lot of books. I know that he was considered a 'resistance poet' and served on an executive committee of the ...

Evolutionary consolation

[Mommy puts son to bed] Mommy, I'm so afraid. - Why, darling? Do you think I have bad genes? - Why do you think that? Girls don't want to talk with me. - But you got your genes from mommy and daddy. So? - Mommy and daddy talked to each other. Did you? - Yes. ...

Polshoogte

Over ruim een week begeef ik me met mijn dochter van vijf op glad ijs. Ze is hier in Zuid-Korea beschermd opgegroeid in een van de meest homogene samenlevingen ter wereld. Volgens de nu door het stof kruipende minister Stef Blok is hier bijna geen criminaliteit en gaan de mensen alom begripvol met elkaar om. ...

Reading: Stone by Nick Makoha

Nick Makoha (b. 1974) is a Ugandan poet who fled the terror regime of Idi Amin. He studied biochemistry and worked in a bank, but poetry was his calling. His most important publication is Kingdom of Gravity, "a searing, mysterious contemplation of exile, fatherhood and violence". I read a poem about corruption. Stone The best thing I ...

I want my words to live in a redeeming, magnificent song to worship the hole in freedom

To be a bad poet

who is not invited to exotic poetry festivals in cultural capitals, not celebrated for his otherness, not for the soothing justice that emanates from his professionally __translated words, not for the clapping of the audience when he reads and they see the scaffolding of a pristine soul To be that poet who loves the colors ...

Advice for people having a conversation -Speak as if you are laughing and thinking at the same time