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Self-reflexive

trans­lated into
  • Wake
    Wake
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    Wake
    This plea for freedom and imagination deserves attentive readers
    Poëziekrant

    For Kurt De Boodt poetry is word art. He sees every collection as a new exploration. His poems are especially loved by readers who love the richness of the Dutch language and the sounds it can evoke, readers who know to embrace the language plays the poet enfolds in every poem.

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  • Cover Choir
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    Choir
    A monument, in the oeuvre of Verhelst as well as in the history of poetry
    De Standaard

    ‘Choir’ is the first anthology of poems Peter Verhelst selected himself out of published and unpublished works. This new context forced Verhelst not only to change the chronological order, but often also to a rewriting of several poems.

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  • Cover Light Metres
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    Light Meters
    Ruth Lasters operates with a pair of silver scissors, filleting modern society affectionately, but uncompromisingly.
    Jury Report VISB Prize

    She connects a football game to the way our brain works, and flashing neon lights remind her of her own futility. Ruth Laster's poetry is characterized by playful leaps of the mind, yet they are never banal. Lasters employs language as a magnifying glass: she twists reality to see with a crystal-clear vision, against the loss of wonder, and for the gusto of discovery.

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  • Cover Now is Already too Late
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    Now is Already too Late
    A poet like no other.
    NRC Handelsblad

    Erik Spinoy constructs his collections with great care, dividing them meticulously into sections and cycles that reinforce his treatment of themes. He rediscovers himself time and again, like a snake shedding its skin. His book ‘Now is Already too Late’ is no different in this respect, and at the same time it is.

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    Home
    Buelens writes a forthright terroristic poetry, although with still carefulness and subtility
    Jeroen Mettes

    ‘Home’ investigates what makes us feel at home. Is it a place, a feeling, a language, a wireless connection or a carefully cultivated illusion? At first sight his poetry appears to be difficult, and while it can hardly be called simple, it is never uncomprehensible. Rather, it links the quest for the appropriate linguistic structure with the everyday struggle of the lyrical protagonist.

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  • Cover Our desire
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    Our Desire
    Witty and vilainous
    De Groene Amsterdammer

    A chilling display of all the things people do to each other. Bogaert is not only one of the most modern but also one of the most interesting poets writing at the moment, one who gets under your skin rather than remaining at a distance, on paper.

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  • Cover Manners of Living
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    Manners of Living
    A poet on a lonely highth
    NRC Handelsblad

    Leonard Nolens is a monumental figure in Flemish poetry. His poetry forms one of the most all-encompassing and uncompromising oeuvres in Dutch-language literature. With brilliance, Nolens addresses a number of classic themes in ever-varying modulations, as if haunted by them. Nolens’ poetry is distinguished by the polyphonic ways of thinking and imaginary ways of acting that are contained within it.

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  • Cover the blood spot
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    The Blood Spot
    About this poetry, we will not run out of themes to talk about
    De Volkskrant

    Paul Demets' poetry is very much aware that language constitutes both the individual and the society in which a human being lives. His poetry questions the social and ethical dimensions, and resulting dilemmas, of modern society and time. In a world without fixed points to hold onto, the search for the self and the longing for interaction with the other ground Demets’ poems.

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  • Cover something & nothing
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    Something & Nothing
    Insingel’s language has the grim structure of a machinery, but when carefully read that machinery displays emotions
    NRC Handelsblad

    Language is at the heart of Mark Insingel’s oeuvre. His writing is based on an idiosyncratic, creative relationship with existing forms of expression such as slogans, traditional proverbs and idiomatic phrases, which he undermines and in his unique way playfully and unexpectedly combines in varying settings to eke out new meanings.

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    Help
    This is great theatre on the square centimeter. The leading role? The classical duo: you and me.
    Leonard Nolens

    The poems in ‘Help’ show the influence of the theatre: the two characters presented are utterly at the mercy of their urges, fears and desires. ‘Help’ is representative of Meuleman’s themes and obsessions; he is a cold observer of what might better be concealed behind closed doors. The author portrays characters who cast off their façades and make their way through a dark universe of loveless dependency, power, perversion and rampant sexual compulsions.

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  • Cover Affairs of the Heart
    Cover Affairs of the Heart
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    Affairs of the Heart
    Van Bastelaere provokes, menaces and seduces, curses and sings, but ceaselessly knows to fascinate his reader, to tangle him in his web of words
    Ons Erfdeel

    ‘Affairs of the Heart’ is generally acknowledged as Van Bastelaere's best and richest work to date. In this collection, the heart appears as an empty signifier which is accorded another meaning in every poem and is shown as a cultural construction.

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