Geert Buelens is a poet, essayist and lecturer of Modern Dutch Literature at the University of Utrecht. He writes columns for the Beglain newspaper De Standaard. In 2001 he attracted a lot of media attention with a book on the Flemish avant-garde poet Paul van Ostaijen and his influence on twentieth-century poetry in Flanders. This study was awarded the prestigious triennial Flemish Culture Prize for Essays in 2003, and has been widely acknowledged as the reference work on the experimental tradition in twentieth-century Flemish poetry. In 2002, Buelens published his first collection of poems: 'Het is', which was awarded the Lucy B. en C.W. van der Hoogt-prize. In 2005, his second poetry collection 'Verzeker u' (Ensure) followed.)
In memoriam dfw
i am here
here
in a cunning pan slipping up
and wondering
wondering wondering wondering
what if and whether and
because
really
could it go on like that
when your mind unfolds
like a glitch
like
mosaic affinity
and
come on now, you can't possibly
mean that
this is how you're wired
not buying it
is your default setting
right?
always seeing things differently
keeping options open
deploying pain management
as knowledge acquisition
understanding knowledge processing as
pain management
not everything is a language game
because everything is
but not everything is green
you know
not everything
is
as if it just came to be
in writing
Translation: Piet Joostens and Iannis Goerlandt