We are parallel – Maud Vanhauwaert

November 10, 2015 This year’s jury report ascertains that ‘Aphorism-like conciseness is interspersed by melancholic humor, absurdism and a single self-conscious silly joke. Out of this rhapsody appears a poet that manages to allow the reader to marvel beneficially at her fickle logic and subversive images. Life lessons are full of limitations, there is not much more to it, but that is enough to show the scope of language and its power to live with its shortcomings and the ungraspable. With utmost precision and a great sense of composition, Maud Vanhauwaert lets the language do the work for her.’
 
‘Her wonder over existence,’ the jury concludes, ‘finally becomes the wonder of the reader’.  ‘What to do with’, ‘We are parallel_’ and ‘Finger’ are available here in English translation by David Colmer.