Window Cleaner Sees Paintings E-Book

Menno Wigman

• Herausgeber: Arc Publications
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 69

Beschreibung

The master of pulsing, post-modern poetic rhythms, Menno Wigman's reputation is assured as one of the Netherlands' leading poets. And as perhaps his country's most exciting poet in terms of form: "a craftsman who knows what he wants" in the words of poet Alfred Schaffer. Wigman's second collection won him the Netherlands' coveted Jan Campert prize.Menno Wigman's first full collection to be published in the UK in David Colmer's outstanding translation introduces English-language readers to a selection of the work of one of the Netherlands' leading poets. Some-times referred to as a 'dandy of disillusion', Wigman combines a classic aesthetic with rock-'n-roll subject matter to sing of sex and booze, vandalism, frustration, poetry and death. Yet despite his unflinching gaze at the grimmer sides of life, Wigman rarely writes grim poems. On the contrary, they are charged with a strong sense of social commitment and human sympathy for the marginalized and forgotten in contemporary society, and tempered with a wryness of tone and a punchy accessibility of style.Wigman's voice in the English language is startling and unexpected, and as such, makes a deep and lasting impact. As Francis Jones says at the conclusion of his introduction to this book: "Wigman's poetry is a powerful brew in Dutch. Remixed in Colmer's English, it's heady stuff too."

Leseprobe

WINDOW-CLEANER SEES PAINTINGS

Published by Arc Publications,

Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road

Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK

www.arcpublications.co.uk

Original poems copyright © Menno Wigman & Uitgeverij Prometheus, Amsterdam 2016

Translation copyright © David Colmer 2016

Introduction copyright © Francis Jones 2016

Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications 2016

978 1910345 61 0 (pbk)

978 1910345 62 7 (hbk)

978 1910345 63 4 (ebook)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The poems selected for this edition first appeared in the following publications from Prometheus / Bert Bakker Publishers:

’s Zomers stinken alle steden (1997), Zwart als kaviaar (2001), Dit is mijn dag (2004), De wereld bij avond (2006), De droefenis van copyrettes (2009), Mijn naam is Legioen (2012) and Slordig met geluk (2016).

Arc Publications is grateful to Prometheus / Bert Bakker for permission to reproduce the poems in the original Dutch.

Earlier versions of some of these translations were published in the magazines Cordite, Dutch, Island, Little Star, The Low Countries and Modern Poetry in Translation.

Design by Tony Ward

Cover design by Tony Ward & Ben Styles

Cover photograph © Tony Ward

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.

This book was published with the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature

Arc Publications ‘Visible Poets’ series

Series Editor: Jean Boase-Beier

WINDOW-CLEANER

SEES PAINTINGS

MENNO WIGMAN

Selected & translated by

David Colmer

Introduction by Francis Jones

2016

CONTENTS

Introduction

Translator’s Preface

from ’s Zomers stinken alle steden (1997)

Jeunesse dorée

•

Jeunesse dorée

Bijna dertig

•

Almost Thirty

Bloedgang

•

Blood-beat

Laura

•

Laura

Semper Eadem

•

Semper Eadem

fromZwart als kaviaar (2001)

Misverstand

•

Misunderstanding

Grootsteeds

•

Big-City

Leerplicht

•

Compulsory Education

fromDit is mijn dag (2004)

Telefunken

•

Telefunken

Hotelnacht

•

Hotel Night

Dit niet

•

Not This

Tot besluit

•

In Conclusion

Bij de gemeentekist van mevrouw P.

•

Beside Mrs P.’s Council Coffin

Levensloop

•

Growing Up

fromDe wereld bij avond (2006)

Vuilstort

•

Rubbish Dump

Zwembad Den Dolder

•

Institution Swimming Pool

Glazenwasser ziet schilderijen

•

Window-cleaner Sees Paintings

fromDe droefenis van copyrettes (2009)

Tot mijn pik

•

To My Dick

Lelijk zijn we

•

We Are Ugly

Het is dat men de straten kent

•

Because You Know That Part of Town

fromMijn naam is Legioen (2012)

Aan een man in de supermarkt

•

To a Man in the Supermarket

Kamer 421

•

Room 421

En dorpen waren er, vernielingen

•

There Were Towns, Vandalism

Openbaring in de H&M

•

Revelation in H&M

Tuincentrum Osdorp

•

Sunday, Garden Centre

Oud-West

•

Old West

Soms voel je bijna dat je leeft

•

There’s Times You Almost Feel Alive

De maan is onder…

•

The moon has left the sky…

Zomeroproer

•

Summer Riot

Hitlermüde

•

Sick of Hitler

Natte woorden

•

Wet Words

Promesse de bonheur

•

Promesse de bonheur

De weg van alle boeken

•

The Way of All Books

fromSlordig met geluk (2016)

Herostratos

•

Herostratos

Rien ne va plus

•

Rien ne va plus

Aarde, wees niet streng

•

Earth, Don’t Be Hard

Beddendood

•

Bed Death

Toen ik begon te schrijven

•

When I Started Writing

Pijn

•

Pain

Tot de bodem

•

To the Bottom

Afgeblauwd

•

Unblued

Tegen de natuur

•

Against Nature

Rouw en ruzie

•

Grief and Grievance

Vandaag is iedereen mooi

•

Everyone Is Beautiful Today

Notes

Biographical Notes

POST-PUNK DRUMMER, DARK ROMANTIC, DANDY OF DISILLUSION?

THE POETRY OF MENNO WIGMAN

“Far and away the best poet of his generation”. [1] This was the reaction of fellow Dutch poet Ingmar Heytze to Menno Wigman’s 1997 debut volume, s’ Zomers stinken alle steden (All Cities Stink in Summer). The recognition has continued. Wigman’s second collection, Zwart als kaviaar (Black as Caviar), won him the Netherlands’ coveted Jan Campert Poetry Prize in 2001. Now, five more collections have followed, plus a two-year tenure as City Poet for Central Amsterdam, and the 2015 triennial A. Roland Holst prize for his poetic oeuvre. Menno Wigman’s reputation is assured as one of the Netherlands’ leading poets. And as perhaps his country’s most exciting poet in terms of form: “a craftsman who knows what he wants”, in the words of poet Alfred Schaffer.

There’s a back-story to this. It’s no coincidence that Wigman, the master of pulsing, post-modern poetic rhythms, was a drummer in a late-70s teenage punk band. Still in his teens, he also edited a zine about music and anti-establishment politics. Here he not only wrote most of the articles, but also increasingly included his own poems. And several self-published collections followed before his work appeared with leading Amsterdam literary publisher Bert Bakker in 1997.

Wigman’s vision, especially in his earlier poems, may seem post-punk – harsh but stylish, modern, urban. His work, however, is rooted in a longer and wider poetic tradition. He has published several anthologies of Dutch poetry, and in poems and interviews he references twentieth-century master poets Hendrik Marsman and J. Slauerhoff. The latter, in fact, supplied the epigraph for ‘Rien ne va plus’ in this English-language collection. Moreover, Wigman has translated several volumes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke, Leopold Andrian and Else Lasker-Schüler from German. Plus, tellingly for his own work, Charles Baudelaire and Gérard de Nerval from French. In 1998 he also published a collection of French decadent poetry: Wees altijd dronken! (Always be drunk!).

In a 2001 interview, Eric Brus asked Wigman if he would call himself a romantic decadent. Perhaps – but more a “dark romantic” in the nineteenth-century sense, came the reply:

I’ve long been fascinated by 19th-century French ‘decadent’ poets, like Jean Lorrain, Jules Laforgue and especially Charles Baudelaire. […] I think I have a similar feeling about the present day as the French poets then: the feeling of living in an end-time. […] It’s a faster time than ever, but not a very rich one. And yet: there’s a huge variety of pleasures available everywhere, and that’s not easy to dodge. A lot of my poems are about pleasure and its ultimate consequences. The glass is drained, and what are you left with? […] You can also see it as a battle against the drudgery that life’s always threatening to become.

Baudelaire was also known as a dandy. For Baudelaire, dandyism was not just the pursuit of perfection, but also “the burning desire to create a personal form of originality”, to “combat and destroy triviality”. [2] In a similar sense, Wigman was called “the dandy of disillusion” by Erik Jan Harmens, reviewing Wigman’s 2009 collection De droefenis van copyrettes (The Melancholy of Copy Centres). I’m not totally comfortable with the dandy label. Baudelaire notwithstanding, it has a nuance of unseriousness – and Wigman’s work is far from unserious. Wigman is, however, a perfectionist. In a 2004 interview with Annette van den Bosch, he reported that he typically produces one to two couplets in a writing session, and works for months – even up to a year – on one poem. And combating the trivial is one of Wigman’s poetic purposes. Or rather, trying to combat the tragic of the commonplace, by exposing it to the reader’s gaze – though he knows full well he cannot destroy it. In this he seems closer to Baudelaire the dissectionist of the human state than to Baudelaire the detached dandy. So, on the one hand, Wigman calls out the truly trivial, such as the “kilograms / of lifeless hours” spent watching TV in ‘Telefunken’. On the other hand, he doesn’t flinch from the everyday awfulness of an aging mother losing her mind in ‘Room 421’, or a dying father losing his body in ‘Growing Up’.

When Wigman’s first mainstream volume appeared, in 1997, he had just turned thirty. Though its poems have a young person’s directness, these are no juvenilia. They already have a tone of ennui, of spleen – as in ‘Laura’, where love only comes true when the lover is absent. In the recent poem ‘When I Started Writing’