K. Michel (1958) is a poet who is able to view the world and life from an unforced but not for that reason naive point of view. This “open” and often surprising perspective produces poems in which unusual connections are made. In clear, transparent language he dishes up for the reader a world he or she was unprepared for – one in which language begins with “Ouch” or in which the Hofvijver Palace lake in The Hague stands on end and its fish gaze out over the city. Here and there, his poems are like skipping songs, compilations of what at first sight appear to be dissimilar things, out of which he seems to express a wonderful kind of randomness. Overall, his work is wise and playful, but above all light in tone. Since his debut in 1989, Ja! Naakt als de stenen (Yes! Bare as the Stones), four more collections of poems have appeared: Boem de nacht (Boom the Night) in 1994, Waterstudies (Water Studies) in 1999, Kleur de schaduwen (Colour the Shadows) in 2004 and In een handpalm in 2008. Nevertheless, his work has attracted attention from the very outset; for Boem de nachthe was awarded the Jan Campert Prize, for Waterstudies no less than the Herman Gorter Prize and the VSB Poetry Prize.

(Adapted from a text written by Rob Schouten and translated by John Irons, published on www.poetryinternational.org)

 

Dirk Vis (1981) studied at the Language and Image department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. In 2007 he published a limited edition of Made in Dongguan, (together with Judith de Leeuw (http://www.visendeleeuw.nl). He is editor of HTV de IJsberg, a bimonthly art paper that is distributed for free throughout the Netherlands (http://www.deijsberg.nl). He currently studies at the Design department of the Sandberg Institute. Check out his homepage at http://www.dirkvis.net/.  

The starting-point of AH (a shower song) is a text that moves between breathing and singing, representing the flow of time. Words glide in and out of each other in a way that reminds us of respiration, or of the “stream of consciousness” of somebody standing in the shower whose thinking and poems (singing) about the unfolding of time flow almost iconically into each other. It’s almost as if the reader is allowed passivity, but the reader’s role changes. The endless loop of the work forces the reader to adjust his or her reading and interpretation strategy.

AH (a shower song) was translated from Dutch into English by Paul Vincent.
AH (a shower song), 2008