Peter Theunynck

In Theunynck’s work, in fact, everything takes flight: words, verses, stanzas, cycles and collections, all apparently as light as feather, surround man, nature, art and society. The theme of art is most apparent in The Trees Are Purple and the Sky (De bomen zijn paars en de hemel). In between cycles on the invention of paper and printing, images appear of artists including Edward Hopper, Gustav Klimt and Frans Masereel. Theunynck says of his own work that what he didn’t succeed in evoking with palette and brush he did manage to bring about with verse and paper, creating arresting imagery. At the beginning of Man in Manhattan, Peter greets the poets, those strange creatures who wish to measure beauty, while later he allows one of his cherished predecessors, W.H. Auden, to speak on the principle that “The words of a dead man / are modified in the guts of the living”. 

One of the dead poets churning in Theunynck’s bowels is the sensitive-symbolist poet Karel van de Woestijne, to Theunynck he devoted a biography. The ‘Descents’ series in Theunynck’s Tear Gas Society (Traangasmaatschappij) is preceded by lines by van de Woestijne: “This is the house no-one unlocked / this is the window that saw no morning . . .” (from The Orchard of Birds and Fruit (De boom-gaard der vogelen en der vruchten), 1903–05). In van de Woestijne’s case, the house, within which can be seen, amongst other things, the poet’s body and emotions, is kept tightly shut. In ‘Descents’, Theunynck evokes a similar stifling feeling of man and nature covered by a bell-jar. However, unlike Van de Woestijne, he sheds not tears but blood in his description of a man shooting pigeons. 

Peter Theunynck does not want to remain cooped up with his prize poems. Wholly convinced of their relativity, he has unlocked the house and set off to discover the outside world. For example, in Exceptional Present, together with photographer Norbert Maes, he investigates the interior lives of disabled people. And, as chairperson of the Green Belt Front and spokesperson of the Lappersfort Poets Society, Theunynck mobilises poetry against the continuing damage to the planet and gives voice to those neglected in “the land of civilian kings”. Poetry 
Berichten van de Pan American Airlines & Co (Messages from Pan American Airlines & Co), Manteau, Antwerpen, 1997 
De bomen zijn paars en de hemel (The Trees Are Purple and The Sky), Manteau, Antwerpen, 1999 
Man in Manhattan, De Wereldbibliotheek, Amsterdam, 2003 
Bijzonder Heden (Exceptional Present), Stichting Kunstboek, 2003 
Traangasmaatschappij (Tear Gas Society), De Wereldbibliohteek, Amsterdam, 2006 

Biography 
Karel Van de Woestijne, Meulenhoff / Manteau, Antwerpen, 2010 

Prizes 
C. Buddingh’ prize (1997, nomination) 
Guido Gezelle Prize by the Flemish Academy for Language and Literature (2002) 
Gerard Michiels Poetry Prize (2005)

Links
The works of Peter Theunynck are published by Wereldbibliotheek.