11 Poets from Holland 2 11 Poets from Holland
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ederlands N letterenfonds dutch foundation for literature 11 Poets from Holland 2 11 Poets from Holland The Dutch Foundation for Literature / Nederlands Letterenfonds supports writers, translators and Dutch literature in translation Information Travel costs support Dutch Foundation The Foundation’s advisors on poetry, literary The Foundation is able to support a publisher for Literature fiction, quality non-fiction, youth literature and wishing to invite an author for interviews or Nieuwe Prinsengracht 89 1018 VR Amsterdam graphic novels are present each year at promi- public appearances. Literary festivals are Tel. +31 20 520 73 00 nent book fairs, including Frankfurt, London, likewise eligible for support. Additionally, the Fax +31 20 520 73 99 Beijing and Bologna. Poets from Holland, Foundation organizes international literary The Netherlands Books from Holland, Quality Non-Fiction from events in co-operation with local publishers, [email protected] Holland, Children’s Books from Holland and festivals and book fairs. www.letterenfonds.nl Graphic Novelists from Holland recommend Advisor Poetry highlights from each category’s selection. International visitors programme The visitors programme and the annual Individual poets from the Netherlands are also Amsterdam Fellowship offer publishers and featured in separate brochure series: editors the opportunity to acquaint themselves Contemporary Dutch Poets, Zeitgenössische with the publishing business and the literary Niederländische Poesie, and Great Dutch infrastructure of the Netherlands. Poets of the 20th Century. If you would like to receive more information or brochures from this Translators’ House series, please contact Thomas Möhlmann. The Translators’ House offers translators of Thomas Möhlmann [email protected] Dutch literature the opportunity to live and work Over eighty interesting Dutch poets are featured in Amsterdam for a period of time. It is involved Travel costs support at the Dutch domain of Poetry International with numerous activities assisting and advanc- Web. Please visit www.poetryinternationalweb. ing translators’ skills. Each year the Literary net/pi/site/country/item/6 for heaps of informa- Translation Days are held for those translating tion and poems in English translation. into and from Dutch. Translation Grants Schwob Foreign publishers and magazine editors Schwob draws attention to and supports wishing to publish a translation of Dutch or as-yet undiscovered, untranslated classics of Maaike Pereboom Frisian literature may apply for a subsidy towards world literature. Each month the editors select [email protected] the translation costs. Having acquired the rights, new titles on www.schwob.nl. the publisher’s application must be accompa- Schwob nied by a copy of the contract with the rights Background owner and a copy of the contract with the The Dutch Foundation for Literature, created in translator. Application forms are available from 2010 as the result of the merger between the the Foundation’s website. Subsidies are paid Foundation for the Production and Translation of after receipt of complimentary copies, with Dutch Literature (NLPVF) and the Foundation printed acknowledgement and logo of the for Literature (FvdL), is an independent organiza- Foundation’s support. A sample translation may tion financed by the Ministry of Education, be required and evaluated by our external Culture and Science. Policies and projects are Alexandra Koch advisors. Applications for translations that have carried out in co-operation with the Flemish [email protected] already been published cannot be taken into Literature Foundation. consideration. Publishers looking for a qualified translator can request a list of endorsed Interested in receiving our general newsletter? translators for their language area. Send your request to [email protected] or sign up on www.letterenfonds.nl. Additional support for poetry Specifically in case of a publication of Dutch poetry in translation, a foreign publisher or magazine editor can also apply for additional financial assistance. 3 Ellen Deckwitz ‘We need to talk’ Ellen Deckwitz, while only having when everyday reality takes hold, dental Rights published two collections of poetry, is floss, immigrants, a visit to the Dam in Nijgh & Van Ditmar Singel 262 already an ubiquitous presence in Dutch Amsterdam, you can feel the subdued NL – 1016 AC Amsterdam poetry. She has been part of the slam danger. Deckwitz has the gift of being able t +31 20 551 12 62 poetry circuit since 2000 and won the to describe her experiences in a both t +31 20 620 35 09 national Poetry Slam championship in mesmerising and lucid way. While this is by [email protected] 2009. Nevertheless, it is with her printed no means feel-good poetry, you do notice www.nijghenvanditmar.nl work that she reached the larger poetry she is looking for light and liberation: audience. ‘The soil is sucking up the worms and I Ellen Deckwitz in Translation suppose/ that we all want to be/ thought Deckwitz performed on many foreign stages and her poems have Her poems are both energetic and highly of as sweet.’ been translated and published in imaginative, which certainly makes her Her second volume Hey Party (2012) English, German, French and one of the most lively poets in the Dutch takes a very different tone; it is indeed Spanish. language. more of a party. She approaches the Strikingly, each of her two collections macabre with a joke: ‘O jeez, if only I were manage to evoke completely different a skeleton. Or even/ skinnier. Then I could moods. In her debut, The Stone Fears Me finally seep/ through the wall between us.’ Ellen Deckwitz is the best (2011) – which won her the Netherlands’ Fearful or festive, Deckwitz’ poetry is thing to happen to Dutch most important debut prize for poetry, the explicitly open-natured, without mystifi- poetry in recent years. C. Buddingh’ Prize – feelings of dread cation or obscure avant-gardism, but it — Ingmar Heytze dominate, which the poet attempts to allay does offer a cheerful and poignant élan. with ‘the bullet of the ballpoint’. Especially Deckwitz is lord and master of her language from beginning to end. Every image used adds something. * — Jury’s of the Buddingh’ Prize He said we need to talk and thought to grab my ankle Original and sparkling as a but my foot slipped out of the mule. narrative, an idiom all her own comprising vivid I slid down to the bottom of my bag images. A compelling where the fish swim. In a previous life fantasmagoria. I was one of them, relatively happy — De Volkskrant in amongst a jumble I did not have to turn Photo: Nadine Ancher into anything. Sometimes on the surface we saw the bums of ducks, which gave some cloud cover. And now and again from up above a desperate hand would grope for us, the hand that we called god. Ellen Deckwitz (b. 1982) currently lives in Utrecht and holds an MA in literary and cultural sciences. She performed at Dutch festivals like (Translation by Willem Groenewegen) Lowlands, the Nacht van de Poëzie and Poetry International, but also in Birmingham, Paris and Berlin. She was the Dutch Slam Poetry Champion in 2009, is a member of the rock-poetry formation Asphalt Fairies, and during the European Championship of Football in 2012, she was on national Dutch radio as a football expert. 4 11 Poets from Holland Ester Naomi Perquin ‘Lock your horse’ Perquin’s first collectionNapkins at Half prison officer plays a large part. With an Rights is a series of striking, tasteful images open mind, Perquin enters the lives of G.A. van Oorschot Herengracht 613 presented in an accessible style. Perquin criminals, losers and lost souls and NL – 1017 CE Amsterdam revealed herself clearly as writing in the experiences how multi-faceted life is, even t +31 20 623 14 84 tradition of post-war poets of small-scale within the confines of a cell: full of dream, [email protected] happiness and small-scale sorrow, like love, regret, opportunism. www.vanoorschot.nl Rutger Kopland and Judith Herzberg, but You could say that with her classical also showed a more menacing side, for sense of form but fascination with evil, Ester Naomi Perquin in Translation example in the short poem ‘At Full Moon’, Perquin is pursuing a contemporary Perquin performed on several foreign stages and her poems have in which a man is shaving and the associa- version of ‘Romantic agony’. In a climate been translated and published in tion with a werewolf pops up: ‘and then where many of her contemporaries turn English, French, German, Slovenian with a razor/ shaves the wolf from sight.’ mainly to wild and unconstrained forms of and Spanish. In 2010, her poem poetry, Perquin shows herself a more ‘State Secret’ was translated in all In other poems too, she sometimes classical poet, but one who in a subtle way languages of the European Union. suddenly throttles the original idea, or has raises the issue of the perverse character of her images transcend what originally the world and society. No wonder she’s prompted them and take on a slightly regarded as one of the most promising surrealistic quality. You could characterize young female poets of the moment and has The tone, the clarity and her work with the phrase ‘polite oddity’. already won a considerable amount of the eye for the ordinary in That is certainly true of her last collection, literary prizes. an ‘ordinary’ form are very Cell Inspections, in which her past as a effectively conveyed. — Meander As far as I’m concerned, the poem ‘At Full Moon’ DELAY should be chalked on walls, and the poem We are modern. It’s not the right century for love and ‘Architects’, which seems there are no women anywhere standing on towers to be partly pillorying looking out. The last knight unrestrained building died of syphillis.