Tom Van de Voorde (Belgium / writes in Dutch) 1974

Tom Van de Voorde (Belgium / writes in Dutch)

1974

Tom Van de Voorde was born in Ghent, Belgium in 1974.

     In 2008, he published his first book of poetry, a collection of "contemporary landscape" pieces. The book, entitled Vliesgevels filter, ("Curtain walls filter") was nominated for the C. Buddingh Prize for best poetry debut during the International Poetry Festival in Rotterdam, 2009.

     In 2013 he published Liefde en aarde (“Love and earth”), his second collection of poems, isolating microscopic stills of political and economic issues. The collection was nominated for the Herman De Coninck prize for the best poetry collection of 2013 and was awarded the triannual poetry prize of East Flanders. The critic Piet Gerbrandy described the collection in De Groene Amsterdammer as “a sublime experience, in which fright, excitement, euphoria and fathomless melancholy are engaged on the battlefield.” Selections of this collection have been translated into ten languages. A full-length book translation was published in Sweden by the publishing house Rámus Förlag. 

   In 2017 he published his third collection Zwembad de verbeelding (“Swimming pool the Imagination”) and in 2020 his fourth Jouw zwaartekracht mijn veer ("Your gravity my feather"). The latter was published by Querido publishers in Amsterdam and was translated into Swedish by Rámus Förlag. The Los Angeles-based translator Emma Rault has been translating his work into English.

      Van de Voorde has been invited to take part in international poetry festivals in Europe, Canada and Nicaragua. Since 2013 he has been one of the poet laureates at the Versopolis project, a European platform for emerging poets supported by the creative industry program of the European Union.

     As a translator of poetry into Dutch he worked on American poets such as John Koethe, Michael Palmer, Ariana Reines, and Wallace Stevens, published in literary magazines, chapbooks, and book collections. He published the first book length collection of Michael Palmer's poetry and works on a translation of Stevens 'debut collection Harmonium. Together with the Slovene translator Staša Pavlović he translated the poetry of the Slovenian poets Katja Perat and Tomaž Šalamun. With the Iraqi poet Shaalan Sharif, he translated the poetry of the Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan.

     From 2005 to 2010, Tom was the Belgian editor of the international poetry websites Lyrikline.org and Poetry International Web.

     In 2010, he was appointed curator for literature programs at the Centre of Fine Arts Bozar in Brussels, where he has developed an interdisciplinary series wherein writers dialogue with music and fine arts. He has curated literary projects on modern and contemporary artists such as Cy Twombly, Per Kirkeby, Giorgio Morandi, Theo Van Doesburg, and Jeff Wall.

BOOKS OF POETRY

Vliesgevels filter (Ghent: Poëziecentrum, 2008); Liefde en aarde (Ghent: Poëziecentrum, 2013);

Zwembad de verbeelding (Ghent: Poëziecentrum, 2017); Jouw zwaartekracht mijn veer (Amsterdam: Querido, 2020)

For selections of poetry, go here:

https://www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poems/poets/poet/102-28251_Van-de-Voorde

For more recent works go here:

https://anmly.org/ap32/emma-rault-translates-tom-van-de-voorde/