Poet
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Rob Schouten 1954-... country: the Netherlands language: Dutch |
writes essays, poetry reviews and columns as well as poetry. His poems are often melancholic and ruthlessly self-critical. Reviewing Schouten’s work, critic Peter de Boer wrote: ‘His poetry is so steeped in the understanding that all things end up in shower drains and sludge – no amount of cologne or scent of flowers can take that away.’ Rob Schouten (Hilversum, 1954) is a writer of extraordinary, colourful versatility. Apart from poetry he writes prose (short stories and a novel, Lusthof (Pleasure Garden, 2001)), reviews (for the weekly Vrij Nederland and the newspaper Trouw), essays and columns about literature – and sports. ‘And still, in everything I do, / I like to take it easy’, he mocked himself in a poem in 1979. If so, it certainly does not show: Schouten’s essays, for instance, are obviously the products of an admirable erudition and a passionately curious mind, indefatigable in its search for fresh, unorthodox angles from which to think and write about poetry. His own poetry, exciting and surprising in its use of language, full of word-play and catchy lines, is of an equally spacious, non-exclusive character. The ordinary and the sublime mingle with ill-mannered unconcern; Rimbaud may be confused with Rambo, Neckermann teamed up with Adorno, and the metaphysical and down-to-earth made to share centre stage. Schouten is not averse from distortions and allusions, he makes his poetry reflect on poetry, and likes his verse to show chaos and confusion rather than create order in the universe. He prefers to ridicule human (especially his own) existence to making a serious effort to make sense of it through language. In Schouten’s poems everything is interesting and nothing seems to be taken really seriously. Even though they seem to be written close to the skin, self-irony and relativization reign supreme in them. What is sad is overdrawn and thus made grotesque; what is moving or beautiful – a love, a new birth, a day on the beach – is given a sobering final twist. As the Herman Gorter Prize jury wrote about his eighth collection, Infauste dienstprognose (Infaust Service Prognosis): ‘As the black humour of this merry havoc wreaker inspires fewer and fewer laughs, his merriment turns tragic and his tragedy hilarious.’ Author: Mirjam van Hengel Translated by Ko Kooman Gedichten 1 (1978); Gedichten 2 (1979); Een onderdaan uit Thule (1985); Te voorschijn stommelt het heelal (1988); Huiselijk verkeer (1992); Bij bewustzijn (1996); Infauste dienstprognose (2000); Lusthof (2002). Poets: |
