Leonard
Nolens (Belgium / writes in Dutch)
1947
Born
in Bree on April 11, 1947 as Leon Helena Sylvain Nolens, the poet graduated
from Holger Instituut voor Vertalers en Token in Antwerp. Writing under the
name, Leonard Nolens he became one of the major poets of Flanders writing, and
has published over a dozen books of poetry, journals and translations. His work
has been translated into several languages, with major collections in French,
German, Italian and Polish.
Nolens brilliantly addresses a number of
classic themes, as if haunted by them: parents, the questioning child, youth
portraits, farewell parties, city portraits, friends, loneliness, alcohol, God,
money, the dream woman, and dream book. Nolens’ poems invariably distinguish
themselves through their polyphonic ways of thinking and imaginary ways of
acting. Each poem is a reasoning, each cycle a solid yet explosive behavioral
type. Since 1989 Nolens has published four volumes of a highly singular
journal, in which the relationship between poetry and identity is further
fathomed. Nolens received the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his oeuvre in 1997.
In 2004 appeared the fifth edition of his collected poems.
In 2007 Nolens finished the
cycle-in-progress Bres (Breach), which he had been working on for more
than ten years. The book was awarded with the VSB Poetry Prize, the most
prestigious award in the low countries for poetry which carries a stipend of
25,000 euro for the recipient. Bres is generally acknowledged as a landmark in
contemporary Dutch poetry.
He is also known for his highly singular journals,
in which the relationship between poetry and identity is further fathomed. In
2009, Nolens decided to publish his complete journals as Dagboek van een
dichter. 1979-2007 (Journal of a poet. 1979-2007).
Nolens has received numerous other
literary awards, including the Jan Capert Prize in 1991 and the Belgian State
Prize for Poetry in 1992.
—based on writing by Tom Van Vorde
BOOKS
OF POETRY
Twee
vormen van zwijgen
(Antwerp: Pink Editions & Productions, 1975); Incantatie (Brussels:
Manteau, 1977); Hommage (Brussels: Manteau, 1981); Vertigo
(Brussels: Manteau, 1983); De gedroomde figuur (Amsterdam: Querido,
1986); Geboortebewijs (Amsterdam: Querido, 1988); Liefdesverklaringen
(Amsterdam: Querido, 1990); Tweedracht (Amsterdam: Querido, 1992); Honig
en as (Amsterdam: Querido, 1994); En verdwijn met mate (Amsterdam:
Querido, 1996); Voorbijganger (Amsterdam: Querido, 1999); Manieren
van Leven (Amsterdam: Querido2001); Derwisj (Amsterdam: Querido,
2003); Laat alle deuren op een kier. Verzamelde gedichten (Amsterdam:
Querido, 2004); Een dichter in Antwerpen (Amsterdam: Querido, 2005); Een
fractie van een kus (Amsterdam: Querido, 2007); Bres (Amsterdam:
Querido, 2007) Woestijnkunde (Amsterdam: Querido, 2008); Zeg aan de
kinderen dat wij niet deugen (Amsterdam: Querido, 2011)
ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS
Selections
in Modern Poetry in Translation (1997) and in In a Different Light:
Fourteen Contemporary Dutch-language Poets (Brigend, Wales: Poetry Wales
Press, 2002); Poets from Flanders: Leonard Nolens, ed. By Tom Van de
Voorde (Antwerp: Flemish Literature Fund, n.d.)
Epitaph
I
have a love who’s as old as my self.
She
cannot die as long as I’m not dead.
She
so likes being burdened by my name.
She
publishes my flesh and blood till it’s all gone.
She
hawks outdated news of me around the world
And
blindly sorts the lines I never understood.
I
have a love, she’s always in danger
And
can only leave when I don’t know the way.
The
road that we are on, we roll it slowly up
Into
a stone. We’ll lay it one day on our grave.
(from
Laat alle deuren op een kier. Verzamelde gedichten, 2004)
—Translated
from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
Love’s
Banks
Taking
distance and leave is the horny metaphysics
Of
men who keep their love hot and moist
In
a far-off spot, and so cook their days.
Leaving,
slamming doors, is the pure zealotry
Of
women who have swallowed their lovers
And
make their swelling bodies into sheer religion.
I
know those two, they are alone, but for each other.
They
have time, the same one, but on grounds that differ
Like
that banks of that one widespread stream.
In
that water they lie abysmally reflected
Viewing
the passing, passing the view.
And
not a soul who knows what has got into them both.
(from
Laat alle deuren op een kier. Verzamelde gedichten, 2004)
—Translated
from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
Paranoia
They
say that poets should keep their tongue in check.
They,
they are the fashion journalists who slate my clothes
And
tomorrow wear my designs. They are the kitchen inspectors
Who
sup on my flesh and spit in my pans.
They
are the weed killers and dead doctors of poetry.
But
who has clothed the naked and fed the hungry ?
No,
the tongue you have stained on your slides is also mine
And
what you is actually pretty pathetic.
Your
metrical jackets and rhyming britches, count me out.
Your
salt-free sonnet snapshots, excuse me, no, merci.
I
can’t help it, the sublimest prosody
Comes
from the guts, ultimately every soul thinks intestinally
(Unlike
my capital letter, here she comes :
She
is the C clef of my horizontal staves.)
Perhaps
this charms or startles. It wasn’t meant to.
Many
of these lines are hammered together with malice and hate.
Even
with good intentions, my road leads to hell.
If
you suffer you go to hell, there’s no percentage in pain.
Words,
seed and cents were made to spend freely.
Never
put them in the savings book of the evident form.
The
deepest form is in the fellow’s rhythm poetry
With
balls, therefore, as Pavese said, and he gulped his death.
(from
Laat alle deuren op een kier. Verzamelde gedichten, 2004)
—Translated
from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
The
Poet to Himself
Go
on, just you try, unclothe me
To
the bone, I’ll remain the final cut
Of
your suit, the rested rectangle
Of
your bed, your handiest form of hope.
And
you, you’re nothing but a glimpse
Of
me, oh you, my chain-smoking shadow
Between
two trains, my moaning phantom
With
suitcases, you, my hobbling ghost
Who
will wash away through the slow revolving door
Of
a derelict station.
Go
on, just you try, forget me,
My
friend, my frank absent slave.
I
am your whip, you bleed from my hours.
I
am your work and you are my servant.
(from
Laat alle deuren op een kier. Verzamelde gedichten, 2004)
—Translated
from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
Verklärte
Nacht
We
are sitting naked at table. Your eyes light up the room.
Luminescent,
your butterfly hands stir the air as you speak
To
me, or quiet in sleep on the black cloth remain.
I
touch them every day. Their lifelines know my name.
Their
transparent veins conceal the course of my fate, the beat
Of
our blood that changes the white of your cheeks to desire’s mottled bloom.
The
back door blows open. The first drops of rain rustle through
The
trees, sprinkling the wind-shaken window in which you sit glowing,
A
light which shows me myself, into whom I may fade and pass.
You
pile up the plates, brush the crumbs off an fill up my glass.
From
the kitchen I hear the clink of knives and blue porcelain echoing,
Far
off. My legs are aching with not being able to go to you.
(from
Laat alle deuren op een kier. Verzamelde gedichten, 2004)
—Translated
from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
from
Bres
1
We
were many then, people like me.
We
did not lie athwart in mother.
We
lay on father’s top shelf
We
lay on nobody’s stomach.
We
lay well placed in the gap in the market.
We
lay in the distance.
We
lay back and liked each other.
We,
people like me, were many then.
We
were not a fleeting photo.
We
were not a dissolving crowd.
We
were not casual beings.
We
lived in austere houses
Of
stone, central cogitation.
We
were our won exception.
We
were, many of us, like then, me,
And
temperament was no curse.
Personality
not yet a stigma.
The
sexual nature of texts
And
gods was still not a scandal.
We
were on first-name terms
And
every first name was me.
12
We
were few.
We
were some.
We
were others.
We
never touched up the Christian lap
Of
trade unions, never bumbled democratically
On
wings of high fliers to the top of the party—
We
played with fire in their sleep.
We
became black sheep in cloned pens
Full
of baby boomers, we perched like rare white ravens
On
a cage full postmodern parrots.
We
clung to each other.
We
clung to each other like loose sand,
A
widespread street gang of daydreamers,
A
hermetic clique of hermits.
We
lived on our knees
And
worshipped the sun of not knowing
And
kissed the eternal light of scepsis.
Nowhere
were we at the centre.
We
were poor and speculated on the exchange
Of
intellectual tradition.
We
acted with prior inside knowledge
From
forgotten ages.
We
became heroes to our precursors.
We
were jeered at by our successors.
We
became, dead earnest, our own laughing stock.
We
were the open would
Of
a shut book.
We
were the closed mouth
Of
an open question.
17
We
were few.
We
were some.
We
were a few.
We
were others.
We
played no part in a riot
Of
European stature.
We
did not take to the streets.
We
did not take a stand.
We
pitched a tent of books and canvases.
We,
in libraries, swotted modernity.
We
real-timed in sheet music the amazing effect
Of
silence—it still echoes here.
We
carved our statues from study and stone.
They
still stand here upright in rows.
They
will read themselves aloud there.
They
found only later their partners in crime.
We
were not a poetic theme of Mao’s.
We
thought, we’ll make our own poem.
We
thought, we’ll make history here
On
the sly.
(from
Derwisj, 2003)
—Translated
from the Dutch by Paul Vincent
PERMISSIONS
“Epitaph,”
“Love’s Banks,” “Paranoia,” “The Poet to Himself,” and “Verklärte Nacht”
Copyright
©2004 by Leonard Nolens from Laat alle deuren op een kier. Verzamelde
gedichten (Amsterdam: Querido, 2004)
English
language translation ©Paul Vincent
From
Bres
Copyright
©2003 by Leonard Nolens (Amsterdam: Querido, 2003)
English
language translations (c) Paul Vincent
