Archive for May, 2008

We have some new members who want to participate:

Aidan Tynan – Irish writer/poet and critic

Gokhan Ondem – Turkish designer and architect

Jacques Bretard – French philosopher and cultural critic

Ali Madad – American designer, writer and hierophant

Jehosephat Sunrays – Jewish mystic and luftmensch

There have been a few reviews of my book ‘Karavanserai’ that came out last month. I will summarize the reviews below, mostly as a service to my English-speaking friends as Dutch readers better read the originals (links provided under the quotes)

The poems of Martijn Benders breathe the kosmopolitan atmosphere of both past and future, of harsh reality and impalpable mysticism, of lovelineness and rawness combined. These combinations of extremes make reading his poetry to a surprising journey through the human soul and his sometimes enchanting or terrifying life.

The title poem ‘Karavanserai’ is a good example of the aloofness and robot-like qualities of our society. Despite all our progress they are often loveless and cruel confrontations with ourselves. The poet knows how to distill the incapacity that results from that fact into a surrealistic but at the same time very real feeling strangling grip that demasques our finiteness.

Karin Westera – Mystic Soul


So we were surprised to see a real poetry volume appear by Martijn Benders, with a real publisher no less, who recommends ‘Karavanserai’ in lyrical terms on the cover and portraits Benders as a contemporary dervish between continents and cultures.

That promotion speak, of course, but as an exception to the rule no word of it is untrue. The book counts many poems, divided over 4 parts, of which the first and second show beautifully how different life is (and thus also the poetry) in Istanboel when compared to Helmond

Peter van Vlerken – Eindhovens Dagblad

In this time of cultural tension, rebirth of the religion-specific against the universal ratio, a literature top 10 that is dictated by breakfast television and oven-ready superficiality: in such times I’d much rather choose a book written directly on the old caravan route through which Western philosophy found its source and where nowadays every geopolitical question is sensible. A courageous and contrary writer has the guts to walk the line between the Eastern and the Western continent.

Jolie van der Klis

“Karavanserai is a very complex and erudite book, that doesn’t relinquish its secrets to the reader on the first read.”

Peter Wullen, Urbanmag

‘I couldn’t control my tears anymore. Pay attention everyone, this is poetry. What other poet would write in his debut that he’d better have left the writing of poetry to the poets? Here speaks a poet that wants to make himself impossible.’

Kees Ceelen, Loewak

It sounds strange if I say that Martijn Benders after his debut remains my favorite Brabant poet, but that’s just apparently so. Because Benders has been writing beautiful poetry many years.

Han van Meegeren, Cubra

A book that surprises and exalts me: Karavanserai from Martijn Benders. Imagery and metaphors that make me quiet (partly from jealousy), surprise me, sometimes make me laugh out loud. And this is just his debut, unbelievable.

Patty Scholten

I worked in the Dutch art initiative ‘De Nederlandsche Cacaofabriek‘ for about 3 years. It was fucking boring. Well, not always. There were some interesting artists, occasionally. There were also a lot of local artists bickering about who was the boss. The usual exhibition opening managed to attract 5 old ladies, 3 accountants and a dog. I had to film all of those as if it was of universal importance. After two years I had about 200 tapes filled with the same 5 old ladies, accountants and the dog. At some point I managed to convince the board we needed to do something to get more audience in. So I asked a guy I know who throws underground parties to set one up there. It was great. The guys came in and installed like 3000 kilo of blasting speakers, 6 meters high to the ceiling. At night about 800 weird kids showed up. The sound was a fucking blast. It didn’t take long before the Helmond police arrived at the scene. As I was the organizer I had to talk to them. They said ‘What the hell is going on here?’ obviously bewildered by the event and its sound. I said ‘An exhibition’. ‘Do you call this an exhibition? At 2 o clock at night?’ I said ‘Yeah, it’s definatly an exhibition’. They didn’t really know what to say so they left. The party went on until 6. I filmed the sound from the outside windows which were shaking in their rasters. That movie can be seen here:

Kix artwork (Real media Player)

In the morning someone of the board of directions called, sounding really pissed. Apparently those kids had spray painted the whole building, not just the inside but also the outside. The place looked like a fucking mess. Half of the board of directions quit because of this event. It was the best exhibition I’ve seen there.

What I found really beautiful, symbolically, is that the place burned down exactly at the moment my daughter was born. She’s the fire from heaven. She really is. Luckily, the five old ladies, 3 accountants and the dog were not inside when it happened.

The wilderness in your head has a voice.
Neither rational irrational, logical illogical.
It exists, don�t ask me how. Forgotten
language of animals, objects.

Those who can hear it
are dead, dead.

Who can�t: undead. So who is alive?
The wildernis. Silence, they call it,
those who can�t hear it.

Time.

Samuel Vriezen reacts to Komrijs complaints on his weblog. The crux of his reaction is that he doesn’t think Komrij’s anthologies are interesting. He says they are strictly interesting from an academic point of view and he observes that themed anthologies are usually much more interesting than broad ones whose main criteria for selection is someone’s ‘good taste’.

It’s very hard to argue with Samuel Vriezen. He’s one of the other guys in Dutch literature not scared of opening his mouth. He’s so optimistic, so logical and so clever you feel arguing against him would be like arguing against the sun. I really love that as a title: ‘Arguments against the sun’.

A long time ago I rented a small apartment on the Rokin in Amsterdam. When was this? Maybe 6 years ago? 5? It was in fact an anti squat apartment my friend Olga Mink had rented and she wanted to share the costs so i agreed I kinda liked the idea of having a room in Amsterdam.

So the first time i went to see the room I went to spend the weekend in Amsterdam. I met Vriezen somewhere and we went to eat. Afterwards we went to the Rokin room and we met Joshua there. He was staying in our apartment – Olga told me a guy was staying there and I said ok i don’t mind, I’m not there anyway. Enfin, after all these years it seems strange to me that these 4 people met in one night, because they all somehow stuck around in my life. We went to the top of the building where we had a wonderful view over Amsterdam and spent most of the night talking.

I think Komrij’s problem is a common one in dutch literature: lack of good critics. A good critic would have asked him a long time ago why he was spending so much time anthologizing, why not focus on your strong points, polemics and poetry? That might have been better for him, but who ultimately knows? For example, when I see Vriezen I can say that he’s obviously a multi-talented guy. I think he is perhaps a better critic or theoreticus than a poet: not that his poetry is bad or mediocre, on the contrary, it’s pretty good. One thing that stands in his way in regards to poetry, I think, is his clarity. His poetry is sort of crystal-clear, in fact, there are many analogies with his music and criticisms/essays. But this sort of clarity works better in essays than it does in poetry. I have seen some essays of Vriezen where he polemized against someone else and the polemic was superb. I’m pretty sure he never got a reaction. It would be like arguing against the sun, like I said before. And that, ladies and gentleman, is impossible with essays but very necessary when it comes to poetry.

Poetry ultimately is more about power than about clarity. Clarity is often something that rather stands in a good poems way. Or maybe we could say: a good poem’s so clear that its clarity completely manages to selfdestruct on inspection.

Gerrit Komrij is one of the major figures in the Dutch poetry world. He’s a poet, a critic and a anthologizer of Dutch poetry. I like him because he’s one of the few people in the Dutch literature scene who’s not afraid to speak what’s on his mind, who doesn’t hide behind the terror of silence when he sees something he doesn’t like. He’s also a quite good poet, a stern and sometimes feared critic and one of the few people that actually cared enough about Dutch culture to attempt to anthologize it.

Today Gerrit posted an item on his weblog saying that his latest anthologies, “De Nederlandse po�zie van de twaalfde tot en met de zestiende eeuw and “De Nederlandse po�zie van de zeventiende en de achttiende eeuw” (Dutch poetry from the 12th to the 16th century and Dutch poetry from the 17th to the 18th century) sold exactly 24 copies in one years time. ‘The comments freeze in my throat’ Gerrit wrote. I’m totally baffled by this number as well. It’s the ultimate insult, the product of a society that has utterly forgotten and despised its own roots.

That might sound hypocritical coming from a guy who chose to discontinue his weblog in dutch. I am aware of that. But it’s exactly why I chose to discontinue writing in Dutch. I do not want to serve such an audience. I’d rather try master a foreign language than be content to serve a few hundred people, a scene summarized by an insulting cloak of silence, where everyone is afraid to speak what’s on his mind, where no one dares say anything positive or negative about each other. Oh please. I have better things to do in this world.