Poets

Benno Barnard originates from Amsterdam, but has lived in Belgium for over thirty years. He made his debut in 1981 with a volume of cerebral romantic poetry. His later collections – influenced by the English poets of the interwar period – are more sober in tone and testify to a historical pessimism; they contain both series of longer poems and mini-epics. After reworking John Dryden’s classical All for Love in Dutch (Liefdeswoede, 1993), he wrote four verse dramas of his own; Mevrouw Appelfeld (2007) is his first prose work for the theatre.