#maartenvandergraaff

Over the past year I’ve been translating the poetry of Dutch writer Maarten van der Graaff. In addition to two poetry collections, Vluchtautogedicten (Atlas Contact, 2014) and Dood werk (Atlas Contact, 2015), he’s also written a well-received novel, Wormen en engelen (Atlas Contact, 2017). He’s a rare poet that brings his politics into his work ethic and in his advocacy of other poets. 

A few of those translated poems are up on the Versopolis website: http://www.versopolis.com/poet/177/maarten-van-de-graaff

LIST WITH PUBLIC DISCLOSURES

Fuck the avant-garde, I say with Cathy Park Hong.

I make public that I want to stay in bed

because everything around me is making me crazy.

I make public that I walked in South Holland’s polders

and dreamt that I was overgrown by life forms

older than man, my loneliness or yours.

My fascism is that I don’t know how to write

about community.

I make public that Cathy Park Hong called out poetry’s segregation

and that now I don’t know how to write.

That I report, right here.

I make public that it is 2015:

once again I long for a tone-deaf plant life,

but this is also impotence.

Fuck the avant-garde, I say with Cathy Park Hong

and wait for the clenching of my teeth.

It is 2015, and I make public

that my teeth clench.