Blue-sick

Like Bernard Dewulf’s much enjoyed, poetical columns, his poems bear nothing of the loudmouthed language of newspaper headlines. His poetry is fragile and well-wrought, intimate and full of amazement at life, love and temporariness. His first collection did not appear until 1995. In ‘Where the hedgehog walks’, Dewulf writes about love, dementia, the relationship between parents and children and how poetry and reality relate to each other. Only in 2006 did he once again take to the stage as a poet with ‘Blue-sick’.

Observation is second nature to Bernard Dewulf, not only as a means to gather inspiration, but also as a linguistic method to catch a glimpse of the essence of things. There are all sorts of things being watched in his poetry. What is more, he doesn’t come across as a cool observer; on the contrary, in a stylised language he transforms his images and impressions into highly sensitive poems. Whether dealing with the ever quieter world of the elderly suffering dementia, the revealing non-verbal communication of an intimate embrace in bed with one’s lover or with deaf-and-dumb objects like paintings, in his poetry Dewulf wishes to articulate reality – however unutterable it might be.