Article
Roland Jooris: A brief introduction
April 08, 2015
When Correen Dekker asked me last Friday if I would like to provide an ‘extensive introduction’ to the poetry of Roland Jooris at Poetry International, I felt the paradox that lies in many of Roland Jooris’s poems.
The critic Hans Vandevoorde once described Roland Jooris's poetry with the words: ‘You can only speak of Roland Jooris’s poems in paradoxes. I know of no other poetry as concrete in its abstraction, so lean and fleshy, so sparing and so greedy. Its nicety, detachment and asceticism conceal a sumptuous sensuality, an amazing appetite, an unseen generosity’.
Roland Jooris’s poems are meticulously shaped, modelled, kneaded and whittled down to words that appear to be the last words left. They are reduced to their essence and, as such, seem to grow still, become ethereal and vanish. At the same time, these poems sit sturdy and solid on the page, conjuring up all manner of things. Vanishing and appearing is the paradox with which and upon which Roland Jooris paints poems.
In ‘Somewhere’, from the collection Crookedity, the last verse is:
the rustling
that he conjures down
from paper
Well, I certainly had the appetite and generosity to appear, but there was also the desire to vanish. Not only did the exceptionally tight deadline strike terror into my heart. Neither will I dwell on the fact that I do not necessarily attribute to myself much rhetorical talent. No, the question that immediately sprang to mind was: ‘How in God’s name do you introduce a poet who is a living legend, to whom you have always looked up and who has amassed a body of works that you have far from finished?’
Roland Jooris debuted in 1958; already in 1978 the collection Poems 1958-1978 was published by Lotus of Antwerp, and he continued steadily adding collections up until the volume, Crookedity, which appeared in 2012.
Incidentally, these are collections that not only became stronger as they succeed one another; they also improve continually with time. I have been reading Crookedity for the past 18 months, and I still have the impression that I have not yet ‘finished’ it.
Perhaps I should try and introduce Roland Jooris’s poetry with a statement that he, himself, made about his poems:
By writing away the superfluous
I attempt to lend the poem
a greater pregnancy and voluptuousness.
My poems are actually nude studies
They seem unclothed in their linguistic form
They are well-honed bodies
Their asceticism is their sensuality.
Roland Jooris’s life and writings are permeated with the interaction between art and poetry. He has always been fascinated by the developments in the plastic arts and has written a great deal about them in poems and articles. He has also, incidentally, acted as curator of the Raveel Museum in Machelen-aan-de-Leie. Painted or written is the title of a collection of essays from 1992, which includes essays on Raoul De Keyser and Dan Van Severen, a painter who also enjoyed the admiration of Hugues C. Pernath.
Perhaps, then, a comparison with a visual artist is an ideal introduction to his poetry? The critic I just mentioned, Hans Vandevoorde, quite aptly compared the poems of Roland Jooris with the sculpted figures of Giacometti: ‘they have been kneaded until they are so ethereal that they appear to dissolve into nothing, and yet they are rock solid’. Such a nice image.
Innumerable attempts have been made to characterise Roland Jooris’s poetry. People have endeavoured to introduce him in one word, with ‘tentative’ or the term ‘attention’. A combination of words called him ‘the rubbed-out poet’. Ultimately, though, as in all good poetry, something always inexplicably remains that escapes characterisation and introduction. That can only be approached, circumscribed or encircled. It is there, in my view, that the aesthetic category of ‘lovely’ arises. The fact that you find something lovely without being able to say why. In that sense, Roland Jooris’s poems are lovely and that, I think, is what he means by the verses:
the inexplicable
buoys us
up
Ladies and gentlemen, all I really want to say is that some poetry needs no introduction. Good poetry speaks for itself and for the poet. At this festival, however, we have the added privilege of the poet speaking – for himself and for his poems. I invite you to watch and listen to Roland Jooris but, above all, to read him. Bibliography
Nico Van Campenhout, Bernard Dewulf and Hans Vandevoorde, The erased poet. On Roland Jooris. Stad Lokeren, Lokeren, 2007
Our Belgium editor, Patrick Peeters, introduced Roland Jooris when Jooris was a featured poet at the 2013 Poetry International Festival. This is the text of Peeters’s presentation.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, poetry lovers,When Correen Dekker asked me last Friday if I would like to provide an ‘extensive introduction’ to the poetry of Roland Jooris at Poetry International, I felt the paradox that lies in many of Roland Jooris’s poems.
The critic Hans Vandevoorde once described Roland Jooris's poetry with the words: ‘You can only speak of Roland Jooris’s poems in paradoxes. I know of no other poetry as concrete in its abstraction, so lean and fleshy, so sparing and so greedy. Its nicety, detachment and asceticism conceal a sumptuous sensuality, an amazing appetite, an unseen generosity’.
Roland Jooris’s poems are meticulously shaped, modelled, kneaded and whittled down to words that appear to be the last words left. They are reduced to their essence and, as such, seem to grow still, become ethereal and vanish. At the same time, these poems sit sturdy and solid on the page, conjuring up all manner of things. Vanishing and appearing is the paradox with which and upon which Roland Jooris paints poems.
In ‘Somewhere’, from the collection Crookedity, the last verse is:
the rustling
that he conjures down
from paper
Well, I certainly had the appetite and generosity to appear, but there was also the desire to vanish. Not only did the exceptionally tight deadline strike terror into my heart. Neither will I dwell on the fact that I do not necessarily attribute to myself much rhetorical talent. No, the question that immediately sprang to mind was: ‘How in God’s name do you introduce a poet who is a living legend, to whom you have always looked up and who has amassed a body of works that you have far from finished?’
Roland Jooris debuted in 1958; already in 1978 the collection Poems 1958-1978 was published by Lotus of Antwerp, and he continued steadily adding collections up until the volume, Crookedity, which appeared in 2012.
Incidentally, these are collections that not only became stronger as they succeed one another; they also improve continually with time. I have been reading Crookedity for the past 18 months, and I still have the impression that I have not yet ‘finished’ it.
Perhaps I should try and introduce Roland Jooris’s poetry with a statement that he, himself, made about his poems:
By writing away the superfluous
I attempt to lend the poem
a greater pregnancy and voluptuousness.
My poems are actually nude studies
They seem unclothed in their linguistic form
They are well-honed bodies
Their asceticism is their sensuality.
Roland Jooris’s life and writings are permeated with the interaction between art and poetry. He has always been fascinated by the developments in the plastic arts and has written a great deal about them in poems and articles. He has also, incidentally, acted as curator of the Raveel Museum in Machelen-aan-de-Leie. Painted or written is the title of a collection of essays from 1992, which includes essays on Raoul De Keyser and Dan Van Severen, a painter who also enjoyed the admiration of Hugues C. Pernath.
Perhaps, then, a comparison with a visual artist is an ideal introduction to his poetry? The critic I just mentioned, Hans Vandevoorde, quite aptly compared the poems of Roland Jooris with the sculpted figures of Giacometti: ‘they have been kneaded until they are so ethereal that they appear to dissolve into nothing, and yet they are rock solid’. Such a nice image.
Innumerable attempts have been made to characterise Roland Jooris’s poetry. People have endeavoured to introduce him in one word, with ‘tentative’ or the term ‘attention’. A combination of words called him ‘the rubbed-out poet’. Ultimately, though, as in all good poetry, something always inexplicably remains that escapes characterisation and introduction. That can only be approached, circumscribed or encircled. It is there, in my view, that the aesthetic category of ‘lovely’ arises. The fact that you find something lovely without being able to say why. In that sense, Roland Jooris’s poems are lovely and that, I think, is what he means by the verses:
the inexplicable
buoys us
up
Ladies and gentlemen, all I really want to say is that some poetry needs no introduction. Good poetry speaks for itself and for the poet. At this festival, however, we have the added privilege of the poet speaking – for himself and for his poems. I invite you to watch and listen to Roland Jooris but, above all, to read him. Bibliography
Nico Van Campenhout, Bernard Dewulf and Hans Vandevoorde, The erased poet. On Roland Jooris. Stad Lokeren, Lokeren, 2007
© Patrick Peeters
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