Meet Belgium’s first Poet Laureate
On 29 January 2014, right before national Poetry Day, Belgium will inaugurate its first Poet Laureate. The Poet Laureate will hold the position for two years, and will write six poems with culturally current themes each year.
The very first person to hold this title in Belgium is the Dutch-language poet Charles Ducal. You can read a selection of his previous work at the above link, with more poems in translation as they become available. A farmer as well as a writer by trade, Ducal also works at the Sint-Albertus college in Heverlee.
Each of the Poet Laureate’s twelve poems will be made available in the three national languages of Belgium (Dutch, French, and German). “This is not a ‘Belgian’ statement, but the result of a literary concern,” said Carl De Strycker of the Poëziecentrum in Ghent. “We know Italian and English authors, but the literary wealth of Brussels or Wallonia remains largely unknown.”
In 2016 this honorary title will pass to a French-language poet, with the intention that every two years a poet from a different language region in Belgium will take up the mantle.
This national position is an initiative of the Poëziecentrum (Ghent), La Maison de la Poésie et de la Langue française (Namur), and a new literary organisation called VONK & Zonen (Antwerp), in cooperation with Passa Porta (Brussels).
Visit the official website of the Belgian Poet Laureate here (in Dutch, French, and German).
