Jan Lauwereyns Biography
Jan Lauwereyns, full name Johan Marc José Lauwereyns, is a writer and scientist. As a cognitive neuroscientist, he specializes in the voluntary control of attention and decision making. He has published articles in journals such as Nature, Neuron, and Trends in Cognitive Sciences, and the monographs The Anatomy of Bias and Brain and the Gaze with The MIT Press. As a multilingual poet, he gained an international reputation for innovative work.
Lauwereyns was born in Antwerp, Belgium. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, in 1998 with a thesis on the intentionality of visual selective attention. He has since conducted research and lectured on the neural mechanisms of perception and decision making at several institutes, including the U.S. National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Maryland), Juntendo University (Tokyo, Japan), and Victoria University of Wellington (Wellington, New Zealand). He is currently Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science and in the Graduate School of Systems Life Sciences at Kyushu University (Fukuoka, Japan).
Lauwereyns has published single-author volumes of poetry in his native language, Dutch, and in Japanese and English. He has received several prizes and nominations for his work in Dutch, most notably the VSB Poetry prize 2012. He was also awarded grants from the Flemish Literature Fund and Creative New Zealand. According to the Flemish Literature Fund, his "analytical approach of poetic subjects produces a remarkable effect: funny, incisive and unsettling all at once. It is a poetry of crackling brain cells". Lauwereyns is Associate Editor of the Belgian literary journal DW B, and often works in collaboration with other writers and artists, including Leo Vroman, Patricia de Martelaere, Rachel Levitsky, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Kiwao Nomura, and Michael Palmer.
Is de Kilimanjaro hoog genoeg?
Om jezelf in de rug te schieten?
Wanneer je voeten wegzinken in eeuwige sneeuw.
Nu dan?
Je strekt je arm,
je haalt de ijzeren hoektand over.
De draak in je hand spuwt vuur.
Draak: orbitaleur, brenger van veelal
ongewenste voorwerpen in een baan rond de aarde
ware het niet
dat de slaagkans omgekeerd evenredig is
met zwaartekracht. Tegenwind?
Het aantal slachtoffers onderweg.
...
Is Mount Kilimanjaro high enough?
To shoot yourself in the back?
When your feet sink in eternal snow.
Well then?
You stretch your arm out,
you drag the iron canine across it.
The dragon in your hand spews fire.
Dragon: space-launcher, bearer of mostly
undesirable objects in an orbit round the earth
were it not for the fact
that the chance of success goes down
with gravity. Headwind?
The number of casualties en route.
...
Laat het bad vollopen en
de huid verbleekt, zweet breekt uit,
en iets als wind blaast schokgolven
door haar donsachtig plukje haar.
Imminente toepassing van het stinkdierprincipe.
Zelfs al weet Pappie dat
kleine meid naakt =
armed & dangerous
de luier dient hooguit voor wat
de duim doet met de tuinslang.
Moraal van het verhaal:
stront sproeit in het rond.
...
Volgens de astronoom die met de mond
vol tanden staat — knappe kerel —
was er in het begin al iets.
Iets: met veel aantrekkingskracht,
een zwart gat, een vlam in mijn hart.
Zo niet, geen gebeurtenis t voor t + 1,
en dan ook niets daartussen
waar tijd plaats
kon vinden. En zonder tijd
geen pijl die ergens vertrekt om God
weet wanneer ergens anders aan te komen.
God, Cupido, Thor.
Zo denkt men zwijgend dat
er in het begin iets geweest moet zijn
waarmee het allemaal begonnen is.
...
According to the astronomer standing there
with a mouthful of teeth — smart fellow —
there was something already in the beginning.
Something: with great gravitational force,
a black hole, a flame in my heart.
If not, no event t before t + 1,
and so nothing between the two
where time could
take place. And without time
no arrow that leaves somewhere in order to
God knows when arrive somewhere else.
God, Cupid, Thor.
So we silently think
there must have begun something
that was the beginning of it all.
...
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