Poet

Gert Vlok Nel 1963

country: Netherlands
language: Afrikaans

is een buitenbeentje in de poëzie van zijn land. Hij publiceerde slechts één bundel, waarmee hij op slag beroemd werd. Om te lewe is onnatuurlik (1993) bevat een reeks even persoonlijke als pijnlijke gedichten en werd bekroond met de Ingrid Jonker-prijs. Naast die bundel gaf hij de cd om beaufort wes se beautiful woorde te vergeet uit met gedichten en chansons.

De keuze van Tatjana Daan: di 16 juni, 20:00 u - grote zaal

Biografie op Poetry International Web

The South African poet Gert Vlok Nel (Beaufort-Wes, 1963) is a maverick on his country’s literary scene. He studied English, Afrikaans and history at Stellenbosch University and worked as a guide, a bartender and a watchman. He has published just one collection, which rightly made him famous. Om te lewe is onnatuurlik (To live is unnatural) contains a number of beautiful personal, poignant poems, for which he received the Ingrid Jonker Prize. His countryman Etienne van Heerden praised Vlok Nel as ‘one of our finest talents’.
Om te lewe is onnatuurlik was followed by a CD, om beaufort wes se beautiful woorde te vergeet, an autobiographical sketch and a full-length show with poems, songs and visual material, which he has performed all over South Africa. Some people say he is a travelling bard with a guitar, comparable to Bob Dylan and the renowned South African troubadour Koos du Plessis. He himself says he admires Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen (‘Tom Waits, he messes about, just like me’).
In his début collection, Vlok Nel paints a personal portrait of his childhood in Beaufort-Wes, a rural part of South Africa with a predominantly poor-white population. His father was a railway employee.
Vlok Nel writes songs that are of a haunting, bewitching, almost hypnotic quality, in an unusual, innovative Afrikaans, comparable with, if anything, the language experiments of Antjie Krog.
Gerrit Komrij included no fewer than eight of Vlok Nel’s poems in his anthology De Afrikaanse poëzie in 1000 en enige gedichten. Gert Vlok Nel was a guest at a Poetry International Special on South Africa in 1998, and has appeared several times in the Netherlands since.

Author: Robert Dorsman
Translated by Ko Kooman Gert Vlok Nel (South Africa, 1963) writes personal poetry, recalling images and characters from his childhood in the rural settings of Karoo and Beaufort West. Novelist Etienne van Heerden praised this singing poet as ‘one of our finest talents’.

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