Dirk van Bastelaere (Belgium/writes in Dutch)
1960
One of the leading poets of contemporary Flanders writing, Dirk van Bastelaere was born in 1960. He came into prominence with his award-winning first collection, Vijf jaar of 1984, followed by Pornschlegel en andere gedicten of 1988, a book hotly debated in the Flemish poetry scene. Yet the volume won him recognition as the most important postmodern poet in Flanders, his work highly influenced by US writers such as Gertrude Stein and John Ashbery.
Although some critics dismissed his work as being over-intellectualized, for the younger generation of Flemish poets he became a mould-breaker.
In 2000, he published Hartswedervaten, which received even further acclaim, and is considered his best book to date, and for which he was awarded the Flemish Culture Prize. Among his most recent collections are Zapruder Stress (2005), Woorbode van iets groots (2006), and Fallicornia (2014). In Wwwhhoooosshhhof 2001, subtitled, in English, On Poetry and Its Worldly Embodiment, van Bastelaere published a book of essays about poetry, and is currently working on a book of essays on photography and cultural poetics, which include a wide-ranging group of essays from everything from Batman, Cosmopolitan magazine, prostheses, and J. G. Ballard’s Crash.
The British publisher, Shearsman Books, has published a collection of the poet’s work titled The Last to Leave: Selected Poems in 2005.
His 2008 anthology of 60 years of Flemish poetry, Hotel New Flanders brought with it a great deal of expected controversy.
BOOKS OF POETRY
Vijf jaar (Antwerp: Soethoudt and Co, 1984); Pornschlegel en anderere gedichten (Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers, 1988/reprinted Amsterdam: Atlas, 2002); Diep in Amerika. Gedicten 1989-1991 (Amsterdam: Atlas, 1994); Hartswedervaren. Gedicten (Amsterdam: Atlas, 2000); Wwwhhhoooosshhh (The Opera Ain’t Over Til the Fat Lady Sings) in Peter Ghyssaert, ed. Turkooizen scheepje van verschil: twaalf jonge Vlaamse dicters (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1997); De wind wit het elders. In praise of Barnett Newman (Ghent: Druksel, 2003); Zparuder Stress (Amsterdam: Atlas, 2005); Voorbode van iets groots (Amsterdam: Atlas, 2006); Fallicornia (Gent: Druksel, 2014)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
The Last to Leave: Selected Poems (Exeter, England: Shearsman Books, 2005)
BOOGIE MAN
Heart, the market square
is slashed with hail and swamped with floodlight.
In the Café du Commerce
the waiters roam around orphaned
in someone’s play or phone,
now you feel the situation’s fraught, their dealers
and the whole city falls ill.
For an instant it happens that you,
as if put through the wringer,
have eyes on stalks,
thundering like a cartoon, howling
in the sirens of Dresden,
unverfroren, an accomplished defense lawyer,
inedible at mass
For there she sits smoking beneath her red hair
vacant as the world in the jewishness of her first name,
and to begin with each gesture
is a happening that makes you clatter like a stork
in a documentary or natural reserve
But there she sits
and she cannot hear your boogie.
It is no bed of roses.
When she kisses
the secret story of the heart
kisses the slapstick of everyday
© Translation: 2005, John Irons
From: The Last to Leave (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2005)
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