Judith Herzberg at the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam 2000

 
Wednesday 1 June 2005

Judith Herzberg made her début in 1963 with Zeepost, a collection which won wide acclaim and was to be followed by five more, all equally well received. Apart from poetry, Herzberg has written for the cinema, television and the stage. Among her plays is Leedvermaak (Gloating), and she wrote the script for the successful film Charlotte, about the paintress Charlotte Salomon.

Among the many prizes she received for her work is the 1997 P.C. Hooft prize for poetry. Interviewed on that occasion, she said: ‘I still don’t feel like a poet. I’m just myself, someone who occasionally writes poetry.’

After Zeepost she published five more collections: Beemdgras, Strijklicht, Dagrest, Botshol and Bijvangst, titles of a composite compactness, indicating how she approaches life in her poetry, by way of the sideshow, the seemingly trivial. The grass at the roadside, the indirect light, the remainder of a day, the small fry caught in the net along with the bigger fish.

Herzberg shuns big words and poetic posturing. In careful, at times almost stagnant lines with unemphatic internal rhyme and casual musical effect, she explores the small manifestations of the great mysteries. ‘I don’t think I believe in a god, but I do occasionally experience a much too large sensation in response to something small,’ she says in the poem ‘On a Wasp’, from her latest collection. In it, she reflects that, if something as natural as the body of a wasp can be called a miracle, the same should apply to the world as a whole: ‘one’s self, one’s eye, one’s compassion’. She herself would never dismiss such a view as absurd.

Candour and ingenuousness are words that come to mind whenever her poetry is being discussed. Her verse is light-footed, often playful and funny (once, reading her poem ‘Het wachten op de halte’ (‘The Waiting at the Bus-Stop’) during Poetry Night at Utrecht’s City Theatre, she had the whole house in stitches). But it also gives voice to pain and loss, unpleasant truths, and grief for dear ones that are gone, lives that are shattered and memories that fade. Then her conciseness takes on a disturbing quality, as in the poem ‘Vraag’ (Question):

How did that come about
From always stay the night
To never want to see again?

[Judith Herzberg took part in the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam 2000. This text was written on that occasion.]

Publications (selection):
Zeepost (1963); Beemdgras (1968); Vliegen (1970); Strijklicht (1971); 27 liefdesliedjes (1971); Botshol (1980); Dagrest (1984); Zoals (1992); Doen en laten. Een keuze uit de gedichten (1994); Wat zij wilde schilderen (1996); Bijvangst (1999).