THE BOTTLE AT SEA: THE COMPLETE POEMS
This bilingual (Dutch - English) edition contains the complete poetry and journal fragments of Flemish poet Maurice Gilliams. Translated and introduced by Marian de Vooght.
A Modernist poet influenced by Expressionists and Symbolists like Rilke, Trakl, van Ostayen, Valéry and Mallarmé, Gilliams’ hope for his poetry was to create a ‘lyrical autobiography’.
The wall becomes mirror of the army of stars.
The silence swells with fish. In the algae
grate the saline crystals of old sores.
Will I remain then in the watery grave
while the phantom ship sails on forever?
– But when Maria sighs, I take her hand.
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from Sources of Insomnia I
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SONG OF STARS
Guus Luijters’ beautiful book-length poem shows us the life of ten-year-old Sientje, a Jewish girl from a poor neighbourhood in Amsterdam who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942. Unlike Anne Frank, Sientje didn’t write anything down about her life and we only have the records of her birth and death. But when Guus Luijters was doing his research for a book about the 18,000 Dutch children who died in the Holocaust, one of these children, called Sientje Abram, began to speak to him at night. The result is Song of Stars, a collection of poetic chapters in which the voices of Sientje and the author alternate. This is how we get to know Sientje and may reflect on her terrible fate.
We have left and won’t
come back my father my mother
my brothers and thousands of others
loaded onto a train we have been
deported I didn’t wave goodbye
I didn’t look back
I’ve left and won’t come back
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Readings from and talks about Song of Stars were given at:
Bookmarks Bookshop London – 15 November 2018 (reading performed by Guus Luijters)
Colchester County High School for Girls, ‘Poetic Records’ – 14 January 2019
Poetrywivenhoe – 24 April 2019
Wivenhoe Bookshop Shed – 21 January 2023
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POETRY OF THE HOLOCAUST: AN ANTHOLOGY
Poetry of the Holocaust brings together poems of the period leading up to, during and after the Holocaust. Most of the poems in this anthology have not been translated into English before. Nearly all of the groups persecuted by the Nazis are represented as the book has poems by and about Jews, Roma and Sinti, mentally ill and disabled people, gay people, communists and resisters. The original poems, of which the texts are all included as well, were written in as many as nineteen different languages. Thirty-five translators, including the editors themselves, contributed their translations.
Always present is the unsaid
the unsaid
that rips the wounds open
Chawwa Wijnberg, from Deceptive (tr. Marian de Vooght)
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Readings from the Anthology were given at the following festivals and memorial days:
Ledbury Poetry Festival – 9 July 2019
Todmorden Book Festival – 5 November 2019
Todmorden High School – 6 November 2019
Poetrywivenhoe – 23 January 2020
Colchester Holocaust Memorial Day – 24 January 2020
University of Essex Holocaust Memorial Day – 27 January 2020, 2021, 2022
University of East Anglia – 6 February 2020
King’s Lynn Poetry Festival – 30 October 2022