Making your debut with a poetry collection in the Dutch language remains as popular as ever! Unfortunately, that is not in the newspaper, but it is not an empty statement in the room either. This year, the jury was presented with nothing less than 24 bundles. Thanks to the publishers! Not only for submitting collections, but also for publishing poetry. Publishing poetry collections in 2024 is, to put it mildly, a risky investment, and publishing work by debutants is of course especially so. The fact that there are still publishers, from very small niche publishers to the colossal pillars of large corporations, who do not shirk their responsibility to enrich the literary field with the voices of new poets, deserves great praise. Well done guys (m/f/x) and keep it up!

Traditionally, the shortlist for this prize can only consist of four collections. However, there are two collections that unfortunately did not make the shortlist, but which we as a jury still wanted to mention. These are the collections Nu we eer toch zijn by Erwin Hurenkamp and Een lichaam dragen by Hannah Chris Lomans. Both collections attempted to add something new to Dutch poetry and both collections succeeded in doing so. The beautiful, sometimes moving poems by Hannah Chris Lomans show the struggle of a first-person narrator with something as seemingly simple as having a body. The poet makes this struggle tangible, something that is extremely important in these crazy times when everyone seems to understand everyone less and less. Where Lomans makes the struggle of one person palpable, Hurenkamp does so with that of an entire planet. With dystopian, but well-fed, sometimes even funny poems, Hurenkamp shows us a world that walks on its hind legs. And he teaches us how to sing about that, no matter how sad.

Anyway, thus four. The jury confidently nominates the following four collections for the C. Buddingh' Prize 2024 (in alphabetical order by surname)

Bob Vanden Broeck - de richting is richting omleiding

de richting is richting omleiding is looks at the word. The narrator in the collection looks at the world he walks through with the necessary understated humor, and knows how to place the strange, sometimes cheerful, sometimes poignant things he sees in it in the reader's head with delicate sentences. Not gratuitous, nor fun, but with the necessary lightness that poetry and the world sometimes need. Vanden Broeck somewhere echoes a great predecessor like Guillaume Appolinaire, who also looked through the world with a surprised, critical, but then again poetic view.

While many poets approach us in these times with top-heavy, committed seriousness, Vanden Broeck manages to maintain a certain playfulness. The danger is that this turns into distance, indifference, a certain coldness towards the people and world around him, because yes, it is all a game after all. And then suddenly Vanden Broeck is hit. Because of an image, a situation, something that he sees happening in the corner of his eye during his long walk through the modern city. When that happens, he doesn't make a big cry, he doesn't milk anything and he keeps from sentimentality. A short sentence is enough for him. De richting is richting omleiding is a perfectly adjusted, sometimes cheerful, then melancholic look at the world.

Sytse Jansma - Rozige Maanvissen

In Rozige Maanvissen, personal suffering, the sudden loss of a loved one, is elevated to great poetry. Of course, more poets strive for this, but the special thing about this collection is that the entire poetic bag of tricks is thrown open, a bag of tricks that the poet knows well and knows how to use excellently, so that the authenticity and rawness of the sadness cuts right through all those tricks. You believe the poet when he tries, almost desperately at times, to turn everything that language can be into a lifebuoy.

Sytse Jansma is not a novice poet. He had previously written good poetry in the other national language, Frisian. Yet the jury cannot escape the impression that he kept back his best for writing Rozige Maanvissen. This collection is electrified, you can sense from everything that these poems had to be written. Although we all hope that something like this will never happen to Jansma again, especially for Jansma himself of course, but also because we read this collection with a lump in our throat, the entire jury is eagerly looking forward to new work by this poet which is so beautiful in this collection and has found its own and authentic yet solid and mature sound.

Dewi de Nijs Bik - Indolente

With a clear look at history, Indolente draws us into both the unworldly everyday and the everyday unworldly. Dewi de Nijs Bik researches closely, which invites interaction; she dares to draw you to places and voices that are constantly silenced. And yet she does not shout about her subject, she writes it down, with love and courage, she gives you a detailed world and a language that keeps you thinking.

Dewi de Nijs Bik makes history, our shared history, lifelike in Indolente. With a well-equipped toolbox of literary resources, which she masters all well and knows how to use at the right moments, she points out the painful patches that hundreds of years of colonial history have left behind. In the past, but also in the present, even in ordinary everyday life. It is logical that De Nijs Bik is spares poetic play in this collection, sometimes a subject is so sensitive that writing can no longer be a game. But in that sparingness, De Nijs Bik shows her beautifully blossoming poetry.

Merel van Slobbe - De maan schijnt feller in de Metaverse

More and more poets write their poetry while the internet hums in the background. Merel van Slobbe is one of them and it certainly doesn't hurt her work. De maan schijnt feller in de Metaverse, although it is full of contemporary elements that will eventually date the poems, which is unfortunately how the internet works, it is very much about something. Where does a world in which avatars and algorithms have so much say leave the individual? In poetry of course!

Where many poets who write about the internet, and more broadly about modern times, only flood us with technical terms or immerse us in digital spheres and nothing else, van Slobbe lets modernity collide with classical poet tropes and thus creates poetry. In other words: a collection that contains both moonlight and Tinder matches and does not become sentimental in that respect, deserves a lot of praise. In De maan schijnt feller in de Metaverse, Merel van Slobbe shows that the internet is incredibly interesting, but also that poetry itself is ultimately many times more mysterious and beautiful.

The 2024 C. Buddingh Prize goes to the collection that, with great poetic ingenuity, made the reader sympathize with a great personal loss. A bundle that leaves you with a lump in your throat, without becoming sticky. This collection is raw and beautiful, two labels that may sound lame, but really really fit here. Read for yourself! The 2024 C. Buddingh Prize goes to Rozige Maanvissen by Sytse Jansma.

Since 1988, Poetry International has awarded the best Dutch-language poetry debut of the year with the C. BUDDINGH'-PRIJS VOOR NIEUWE NEDERLANDSTALIGE POËZIE. With the award, Poetry International draws more attention to talented new voices in Dutch-language poetry. And with success! For now well-known poets such as Joke van Leeuwen, Tonnus Oosterhoff, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Anna Enquist or - more recently - Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and Radna Fabias, the C. Buddingh' Prize was the first important trophy on their wall. In 2023, Alara Adilow won the 'Buddingh' with "Mythen en Stoplichten," published by Prometheus. 

De maan schijnt feller in de Metaverse by Merel van Slobbe, De richting is richting omleiding by Bob Vanden Broeck, Indolente by Dewi de Nijs Bik and Rozige Maanvissen by Sytse Jansma have been nominated for the C. Buddingh' Prize 2024. The jury consisting of Joost Oomen (chairman), Lisette Ma Neza and Toef Jaeger chose the four from a total of 24 collections submitted. The C. Buddingh' Prize awards the best Dutch-language poetry debut of the year and has been presented by Poetry International since 1988.

The winner of the C. Buddingh' Prize 2024 will be announced on Saturday 1 June in the radio programme Een uur Cultuur. On Saturday 8 June, the poets will perform together at Poetry International Festival Rotterdam in a show in which these four most striking new voices in Dutch-language poetry reinforce each other.