Poets

Paul Snoek, the pseudonym of Edmond Schietekat (1933 –1981), was one of the most celebrated and popular poets in Flanders, partly because of his bravura performances in the media. One of his much-quoted quips reduced the Flemish poetic scene to three poets, Hugo Claus, Hugues C. Pernath and Paul Snoek, and proclaimed himself as the greatest of them. He was a multi-faceted artist, writing both poetry and prose and involved in the visual arts, and professionally was a Jack-of-all-trades (working, for example, as a managing director and a copywriter). As if the mystery of his personal life were destined to reinforce the mythological self-enlargement of his poems, he met his end in a car accident which retains a whiff of a successful suicide attempt.