GERALD BRENAN

Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the Gypsies.






Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

Dutch poetry in Indonesian language, translated by Siti Wahyuningsih and Albert Hagenaars

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

GABRIELA MISTRAL

I write poetry because I can’t disobey the impulse; it would be like blocking a spring that surges up in my throat. For a long time I’ve been the servant of the song that comes, that appears and can’t be buried away.






Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

Dutch poetry in Indonesian language, translated by Siti Wahyuningsih and Albert Hagenaars

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

ROLAND JOORIS

My father was a blacksmith, a craftsman. He made things that fit together firmly, horseshoes that had to fit exactly on that horse's hoof. A fence or a plow, robust items. I have the same desire, although I try to create a good object from words. I would prefer for people to say of my work: it is a good craftsman who made this. And if that isn't too big a word, there is also a philosophy behind it: I want to capture the essence of things. Poetry is a quest through language for what is essential in life. In that sense, writing for me is actually removing, editing, until those words remain in all their loadedness.


From an interview in Poëziekrant, January 1986





Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

Dutch poetry in Indonesian language, translated by Siti Wahyuningsih and Albert Hagenaars

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

J. BERNLEF (5)

How do I proceed? In any case, that is different with poetry and prose. Poetry is often present from a hunch, an image or a first sentence. Then you know that you have to put everything aside immediately and work on it, because in the early stages it is often so fleeting that you lose it in no time. A novel doesn't overwhelm you in that way.


From an interview in Poëziekrant, September 1986





Poetry for me is a matter of observing, and although the non-recognition of two identical objects remains a utopia, somewhere there lies the starting point of what I now call originality: a matter of forgetting, almost.


From the book 'Wie a zegt', 1970





Poetry is information, but information of a different order than the encyclopedic, the scientific or the journalistic, which makes the unknown known, gives it names.





Only in the poem does reality emerge. The more that reality 'seemingly' resembles the surrounding reality, the more effectively the poem will demonstrate the double meaning of that concept; mimicry is not just a fascinating biological phenomenon.





Poetry is of magical origin, and although we are far from the rain-singing and poetry-reciting shaman, one of the elements nonetheless remains the more or less incantatory speech about everything that humanity does not have in its own hands: a large part of its life course and the timing of its death. Although we no longer believe that death can be overcome in a poem, a poem can still give us a moment of 'timelessness', as it is called, rising above its words. There is more than what is said.





Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

Dutch poetry in Indonesian language, translated by Siti Wahyuningsih and Albert Hagenaars

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

MARCEL OBIAK

Poetry floats between philosophy and music.


From: Baal & Stuip, 7/8, 1965





Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

Dutch poetry in Indonesian language, translated by Siti Wahyuningsih and Albert Hagenaars

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

RENAAT RAMON

Poetry that becomes a pamphlet ceases to be poetry.


In an interview with Alja Spaan in magazine Meander, 13-02-2025.





Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

Dutch poetry in Indonesian language, translated by Siti Wahyuningsih and Albert Hagenaars

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl

CEES NOOTEBOOM

A poet who likes a painter can’t really avoid seeing the paintings of that painter as living beings, perhaps as persons and, if that is not allowed, at least things with their own universe on which the painting gives a glance. If the viewer remains the same, the painting can no longer change.


From his book Voorbije Passages





Also see:

Frozen poets - Sculptures, graves and other traces of poets

Dutch poetry in Indonesian language, translated by Siti Wahyuningsih and Albert Hagenaars

Critical reviews on modern Dutch poetry



www.alberthagenaars.nl