Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer wins 2016 VSB Poetry Prize

The VSB Poetry Prize 2016 has been awarded to poet, writer, columnist and Classics scholar Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer. The prize jury selected Pfeijffer’s Idyllen (Idylls), which earlier received the Jan Campert Prize, as the best Dutch-language poetry collection of the previous year. ‘This book sings, creaks, fabulates, dreams and is bursting with an almost unstoppable poetical dream’, the jury states.

Pfeijffer received the prize, consisting of 25,000 euros and a glass sculpture by Maria Roosen, from chairman of the jury, Kees ’t Hart, at the award ceremony held on Wednesday, 27 January – the eve of Dutch Poetry Week – in the Academiegebouw of the University of Groningen. Poets Pieter Boskma, Geert van Istendael, Toon Tellegen and Maud Vanhauwaert were also nominated for the prize.

VSB Poetry Prize 2016

The 2016 shortlist for the VSB Poetry Prize, for the best Dutch-language collection of the previous year, includes two Belgian poets and three from The Netherlands. Out of 114 submitted collections, the most recent work by Pieter Boskma, Geert van Istendael, Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Toon Tellegen and Maud Vanhauwaert have been especially commended by the prize jury, and one will be selected as the winner on 27 January 2016, 19:30, at an award ceremony held at the University of Groningen’s Academiegebouw Aula. The winner receives 25,000 euros and a glass sculpture by Maria Roosen.


It was what was – Geert van Istendael
Journalist, essayist and poet Geert van Istendael’s latest book of poems, He was wat was (It was what was) deals with an eclectic blend of themes and subjects: portraits of locals, observant compositions, and an analysis of the modern …

Idylls – Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer
With Idyllen (Idylls), critically acclaimed poet and novelist Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer attempts to reach higher ground. This large volume of poems leaves the more experimental forms that Pfeijffer explored in the past behind; the book consists …

The reality – Toon Tellegen
Toon Tellegen, famous writer of children’s books and poet, resumes his playful examination of abstractions and ideas with De werkelijkheid (The reality). According to this year’s jury report, Tellegen’s latest addition to …

We are parallel – Maud Vanhauwaert
Wij zijn evenwijdig (We are parallel), poet and performer Maud Vanhauwaert’s second volume of poems, offers a fragmentary insight in 21st-century urban life. The book consists of stories, poems and fragments that form a varied and …

 

VSB POËZIEPRIJS 2016
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