Article
Editorial: 15 January 2010
December 10, 2009
Our next issue of PIW, published on 1 February, will feature poets from Belgium and Colombia. To read the previous issue of PIW (1 January 2010), click here.
In the run-up to the Dutch and Flemish National Poetry Day celebrations on 28 January, our second issue of 2010 offers a window on the cultural and physical landscape of the Netherlands through the work of two poets.
Rhythm and rhyme are central to Tsjêbbe Hettinga’s Frisian poetry, which he recites by heart. In his work, images of predominantly coastal landscapes emerge through expressive, musical language driven by the rhythm and sounds of Frisian. To celebrate the Dutch and Flemish National Poetry Day this year, Hettinga was commissioned to write Oan leech en Stêd Niks foarby (Beyond the Salt Marsh and Nowhere City). For this issue of PIW, the two evocative long poems in this chapbook, the eponymous ‘Beyond the Salt Marsh and Nowhere City’ and ‘Teeming with Seagulls’, have been added to Hettinga’s PIW page and include audio recordings of the poet reciting in Frisian. They are published alongside excellent translations into English by Susan Massotty.
Ramsey Nasr became the Netherlands’ Poet Laureate on National Poetry Day in January 2009. In an interview with Thomas Blondeau, Nasr gives an insight into his first year as the ‘Dichter des Vaderlands’, from deadlines for official commissions to sonnet construction, poetry on postboxes and historical accuracy. New poems have been added to his pre-existing poet page on PIW, and David Colmer’s accompanying translations capture well the energy, rhythm, word-play and rhyme of Nasr’s writing, apparent too in the audio recordings of Nasr reading his own work. ‘What’s Left’, the first poem Nasr wrote as Poet Laureate, is among these newly uploaded poems and translations. Inspired by Vermeer’s painting Woman Holding a Balance, this poet imaginatively reclaims the Dutch painting now owned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, both celebrating and critiquing the international reach of Dutch cultural heritage. “I have a suggestion”, Nasr writes:
It’s time to count our blessings. Milk. Earrings.
Delft bricks. We are the owners of light. Like good
trustees we should feed ourselves again with paint.
For those of you in or near the land of milk, earrings and light, Ramsey Nasr, Tsjêbbe Hettinga and other Dutch and international poets will be reading on 28 January in Utrecht at the House of Poetry event.
Oan leech en Stêd Niks foarby is to be published (in Frisian and Dutch) on 28 January and will be available to buy in bookshops throughout the Netherlands and Belgium.
Up next . . .Ramsey Nasr became the Netherlands’ Poet Laureate on National Poetry Day in January 2009. In an interview with Thomas Blondeau, Nasr gives an insight into his first year as the ‘Dichter des Vaderlands’, from deadlines for official commissions to sonnet construction, poetry on postboxes and historical accuracy. New poems have been added to his pre-existing poet page on PIW, and David Colmer’s accompanying translations capture well the energy, rhythm, word-play and rhyme of Nasr’s writing, apparent too in the audio recordings of Nasr reading his own work. ‘What’s Left’, the first poem Nasr wrote as Poet Laureate, is among these newly uploaded poems and translations. Inspired by Vermeer’s painting Woman Holding a Balance, this poet imaginatively reclaims the Dutch painting now owned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, both celebrating and critiquing the international reach of Dutch cultural heritage. “I have a suggestion”, Nasr writes:
It’s time to count our blessings. Milk. Earrings.
Delft bricks. We are the owners of light. Like good
trustees we should feed ourselves again with paint.
For those of you in or near the land of milk, earrings and light, Ramsey Nasr, Tsjêbbe Hettinga and other Dutch and international poets will be reading on 28 January in Utrecht at the House of Poetry event.
Oan leech en Stêd Niks foarby is to be published (in Frisian and Dutch) on 28 January and will be available to buy in bookshops throughout the Netherlands and Belgium.
Our next issue of PIW, published on 1 February, will feature poets from Belgium and Colombia. To read the previous issue of PIW (1 January 2010), click here.
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