the direction is towards redirection
With his debut poetry collection ‘the direction is towards redirection’, Bob Vanden Broeck ventures into experimental poetry. A keen observer, he focuses on small, everyday details that often go unnoticed, rendering them with great precision and using them as springboards for surprising associative leaps. From these impressions, he develops a playful yet exacting exploration of language.
‘Kinetic poetry – a remarkable debut.’ – NRC
Reading the collection is like entering the poet’s stream of consciousness. Some poems are spare and direct, while others unfold through dense and elusive chains of association. Meanings remain fluid throughout: objects are not merely described but reshaped through linguistic play and juxtaposition, opening up new ways of seeing.
Visually, the poems are composed of short phrases scattered across the page, separated by generous white space. These are interspersed with so-called ‘sketches’: longer, more meandering passages without white space, in which a simple observation slowly drifts into a chain of associations, at times bordering on the hallucinatory.
Open-ended and richly suggestive, these poems invite readers to experience how language itself shapes the way we perceive and inhabit the world.
‘An absurd and bewildering universe in which it’s pleasant and contrary, surprising and frightening to roam.’ – Jury report, Debutants’ Prize
