Posts Tagged ‘dutch’

What originally motivated you to begin writing poetry?

Girls. I thought it was a great way of impressing girls. Of course
later I found out that having an expensive mobile phone works much
better. The girl I wrote my first poem to just looked at me like I was
crazy. So I got the natural idea that I was probably not good enough
at it yet and started with the vain idea that i could improve these
skills. Of course later on I realized that having a crisp hundred
dollar bill sticking out of your breast pocket is much more effective
if you want to get interactive.

Are all of your poems kind of constructed around a main theme?

No. In fact if you investigate this idea closely you will see that
‘themes’ actually do not exist in the entire corpus of poetry. This is
because of the nature of poetry, which primarily is a tool that tries
to name the unnameable. You could, for example, claim lots of poems
have ‘death’ as a theme. But do they really? The theme itself is often
just a metaphor for something else. And death is an abstract concept,
in this case operating in the abstract environment of a poem. So what
exactly does it mean to call ‘death’ a theme? Nothing much on closer
investigation. A poet could really be talking about anything
imaginable and make it look like a poem about death. Don’t be fooled.
Poets are tricksters.

How do you feel poetry is beneficial to the world of literature, and
the world itself?

The world of literature kind of stinks. It’s full of fools who have
invested a lot of time in ‘cultural capital’ and are very hungry to
get returns on those investments in the form of recognition. Frankly,
only a complete moron would waste his precious time on this planet
with such insane people. In my opinion poetry wants to have little to
do with those people. The stuff they praise always seems pretty random
to me. They praise good stuff and they praise bad stuff, all is the
same to them. If you wanna write poems just keep out of the world
of literature that’s what I say.

As to ‘what beneficial effect does poetry have on the world’ I am not
at liberty to answer that question since this is one of our trade
secrets.

When you pull together a piece of poetry, is it all at once, or do you
begin a piece and return to it later?

In my opinion the most effective way of writing poetry is to get up at
0600 in the morning every day and write, write the poem until the
draft is finished. I have heard this from several great poets – early
in the morning the mind is the cleanest and its most easy to produce
poetry without the mind interfering with itself. Just do that every
day for a few years, then you have like a few hundred drafts. Then
reserve a month or two to rewrite about 50 or 60 good poems from those
hundreds of drafts. And there you go.

Do you have any big inspirations for your poetry?

How exactly does one measure the size of inspirations? How am i
supposed to know if an inspiration is big or not? Sometimes you feel
something, a little tickle in the back of your head. Sometimes you
feel an incredible urge. Is the last ‘bigger’ than the first? Better?
Hell if I know. Big inspirations, little inspirations, I do them all,
dude. I’m an omni-inspirationalist. In my opinion the whole world is
fabricated by inspirations. But now I am getting dangerously close to
those trade secrets again.

Thanks a ton once again, I know you’re likely very busy and It’s very
much appreciated.

Welcome, Lee. I wish you the best of luck with your project. Let me
close this interview with one of my favourite poems from Milosz, which
concerns some of the topics we touched in this interview:

A Confession (1985)

My God, I loved strawberry jam.
And the dark sweetness of a woman’s body.
Also well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,
Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves.
So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit
Have visited such a man? Many others
Were justly called, and trustworthy.
Who would have trusted me? For they saw
How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,
And glance greedily at the waitress’s neck.
Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness,
Able to recognise greatness wherever it is,
And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,
I knew what was left for smaller men like me:
A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud,
A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.

Czeslaw Milosz

Let me, as an original Dutchy, speak a few words about what it really means to me to be Dutch. I means besides having been born in a country you could only point out on a map if you squint your eyes, and where the houses when you visit look like carboard boxes and you are just not sure if the plane didn’t land in Madurodam.

Okay, we do play some nice soccer. I dont know how its even possible that we always end up amongst the final eight countries in the world. Maybe its the milk or the cheese, who knows. But of course as a dutchman I am proud of our boys and I think there must be something about the ‘dutch way’ that actually works.

But there is another side to Holland. A side foreigners know little about, a side so ridiculous a sane person can do nothing else but conclude its sheer manifested evil. It’s the insane overplanned bureacracy of the Dutch I am talking about.

Yesterday on the news: The National Heatplan was now in effect. The National WHAT? Is there an emergency? What’s going on? I read the article. There’s actually a government agency that made a NATIONAL HEATPLAN that comes in effect, dig this, ‘when its over 27 degrees Celsius for more than 4 days’.

Over 27 degrees Celcius? 80 degrees Fahrenheit and a Government Agency starts up an Emergency plan from tax payers money? Is this an episode of Monthy Python? Did we land in an episode of Groundhog day? No, this is the Netherlands, the country where even sexual intercourse would be taxed if they ever had any.

The institute that governs the National Heatplan is called ‘Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu’ meaning the ‘State institute for Public Health and Environment’. When the National Heatplan is executed this institute informs all the ‘GGD’ (Municipal Health Services) to start inform everyone about how to behave. And what information does this Municipal Health Service spread?

You should stay in the shadow. You should drink water. A cold shower could also help.

Serious! This is the advice they spread around using taxpayers money when the temperature rises above 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Can you even for a second imagine what it feels like to live in such a country, that according to a recent investigation has 10 ‘advisors’ and ‘consultants’ for every existant journalist? So for every person that asks questions, there are about 10 persons employed to think of possible answers in the Netherlands.

So you wonder why the Dutch are angry? I can tell you why. They are treated like little kids by a totally incompetent elite of mediocre people. And that seems a rather Global phenomenon, but in case of the Dutch its effects are, well, just a tid bit more absurd.

Admirers of bureaucratic inanities can download the National Heatplan here

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.