Ester Naomi Perquin Comments

1. Born 1980, Ester Naomi Perquin is a Dutch poet. Few Dutch poets have enjoyed such immediate success: with her first 2 collections, 'Napkins at Half-Mast' (2007) and 'On Behalf of the Other' (2009) she won no less than six prizes and a nomination. Her 3rd book, 'Cell Inspections' (2012) brought her the prestigious VSB Poetry Prize.

2. Ester Naomi Perquin lives in Rotterdam. Perquin worked as a prison warder to finance her studies at the school of creative writing in Amsterdam. In 2017, she was elected ''Dutch Dichter des Vaderlands'' (the Dutch counterpart of Britain's Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom) .

3. The sense of alienation that Perquin achieves is one that is full of compassion. Her characters are not her playthings, but a version of herself, an alternative, that properly considered is just as real. This is beautifully illustrated in the poem 'This morning a lady rang up' in which the fact of someone phoning a wrong number gives rise to numerous questions, reveries and associations around the subject of identity