"Of het tijd kost Anne Vegter te zijn" - film premiere

During the Poetry International Festival, Friday, June 9, Of het tijd kost Anne Vegter te zijn will premiere, a film by Rob Niemantsverdriet and Bas Kwakman. Over the past year, director and cameraman Rob Niemantsverdriet followed poet Anne Vegter in places that are characteristic of the life of this former Poet Laureate and City Poet of 010. In this intimate and compassionate portrait, the viewer gets to know Anne better, both as a poet and as a human being. In conversations with former Poetry International director Bas Kwakman, Vegter talks about her work and her health and reflects on the poems she writes. She also recites from her rich oeuvre.

Life is suffering, the Buddhists say, and in Anne Vegter's case that is certainly true. But she sees a chance to turn life's struggles into something powerful, into beauty. And above all: into language. She is "someone who rolls a rug out of a comma. Then it is about, for example, her lover who left her, to whom she devoted the collection Big Data, drawing a parallel with Medea who was abandoned by Jason. Furthermore, she has the necessary physical discomforts against which she fights (although at the end she says, 'I don't know how to fight this anymore...'). She was diagnosed with MS at an early age, and was advised to lead a quiet, regular life, and above all not to have children. "I pretty much ignored every piece of advice I was given at the time," Anne says. "I always think of myself as quite a project..."

Of het tijd kost Anne Vegter te zijn offers a deep look into the soul of this extraordinary and also complex poet.