Welcome to Dutch poetry - September 2005

 
Thursday 1 September 2005

After the multitude of poets we presented to you in our previous issue (Tsead Bruinja, Judith Herzberg, Anne Vegter, Frank Koenegracht, Gerrit Komrij, Erik Menkveld and Peer Wittenbols), we now bring you one new Poet of the Quarter only, but a very special poet indeed! This new September issue features the poetry of Esther Jansma.

Esther Jansma (1958), who is both a widely read poet and an archeologist/dendrochronologist, just recently published her latest collection of poems, Alles is nieuw (Everything is New; 2005). Several poems from this new volume have already been translated into English by the first Brockway Prize laureate Francis R. Jones, two of which we publish here. Apart from that, we offer you four poems from Jansma’s previous collection Dakruiters (Spires; 2000), translated by Jones as well, and five poems from her VSB Poetry Prize-winning Hier is de tijd (Time is Here; 1998), translated by James Brockway. Of course these brilliant poems and translations are accompanied by an illuminating essay, up-to-date bibliografical information and links to interesting websites. We leave you with more than enough soil to dig into for the next three months, until we’ll publish our new issue in December.