Points Favorite Poets

POINT’s FAVOURITE POETS

Poetry from more than 50 countries!

Selected Point Poet of the month: HUGO CLAUS (Belgium)

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

Here the soil is most rank.
Even after all these years without dung
you could raise a prize death leek here.
The English veterans are getting scarce
Every year they point to their yet scarcer friends:
Hill Sixty, Hill Sixty-One, Poelkapelle.
In Flanders Fields the threshers
draw ever smaller circles round the twisting trenches
of hardened sandbags, the entrails of death.
The local butter
tastes of poppies.

I write you down

My wife, my pagan altar,
On which I play with caressing fingers of light,
My young forest through which I overwinter,
My neurotic, and chaste and tender sign,
I write down your body and breath
On lined music paper.

And in your ear I promise brand new horoscopes
And prepare you again for travels around the world
And for a stay in one or another Austria.

But in the neighbourhood of gods and constellations
Eternal happiness too worns out,
And I have no home, I have no bed,
I even haven’t birthday flowers left for you.

I write you down on paper
While you an orchard in July alike, swell and Blossom.

Hugo Claus, Bruges 1924-Antwerp 2008, is the most important Flemish writer after the Second World War. In addition to his literary work, writing poetry, prose, plays and film scripts, he has also been active as a painter and a movie director. In the fifties he belonged to the avant-garde artists who were active in Paris. His masterpiece is Het verdriet van België (The Sorrow of Belgium, 1983) is about a black page in the history of Belgium: the collaboration with the German occupier. Hugo Claus received many important local and foreign prizes, among which, in 1986, the Dutch Literature Prize,the most important literary honour in the Dutch language.

Other poets selected by POINT Editions Click on a name to read their poems.

Australia: John William Wilkinson
Australia: Peter Boyle
Austria: Paul Celan
Armenia: Violet Grigorian
Bahrain: Quassim Haddad
Belgium: Germain Droogenbroodt, Annie Reniers
Bangladesh: Aminur Rahman
Bosnia Herzegovina: Izet Sarajlic
Bosnia Herzegovina: Mark Dizdar
Brazil: Carlos Drummond de Andrade
Bulgaria: Boiko Lambovski
Canada: Margaret Atwood , Helène Dorion
Chile: Óscar Hahn
China: Bei Dao Duo Duo
Chuvashia Republic: Gennady Aygi
Croatia: Slavko Mihalic
Croatia: Lana Derkac
Czech Republic: Miroslav Holub, Josef Hrubý, Jana Stroblova
Denmark: Marianne Larsen
El Salvador : Roque Dalton
France: Léopold Sédar Senghor Jeacques Ancet
Finland : Paavo Haavikko
Germany : Karl Corino
Germany : Reiner Kunze
Hungary: Miklós Radnóti
Italy: Patrizia Valduga
India: Ganga Prasad Vimal Kunwar Narain,
Ireland: Mathew Sweeny
Irak: Saadi Yousef
Iran: Ahmad Schamlu
Japan: Kazuko Shiraishi
Korea South: CHO Byung-hwa
Korea: Moon Dok-su
Kurdistan, Iraq: Choman Hardi
Luxemburg: Anise Koltz
Lebanon: Fuad Rifka
Malasiai: Muhammad Haji Salleh
Malawi: Frank M. Chipasula
Macedonia: Bogomil Gjuzel
Mexico: José Emilio Pacheco
Mongolia: G. Mend-Ooyo
Netherlands: Bert Schierbeek
Nepal: Tulasi Diwasa
Nicaragua: Gioconda Belli
Philippines: Tom Agulto
Peru: Eduardo Chirinos
Palastine: Mahmoud Darwish
Poland: Adam Czerniawski
Poland: Czeslaw Milosz
Portugal Eugénio de Andrade
Rumania: Mircea Dinescu
Russia: Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Russia: Vyacheslav Kuprianov
Russia: Joseph Brodsky
Russia: Vyacheslav Kupryanov
Slovakia: Milan Richter
Slovenia: Maja Vidmar Tomaž Šalamun
Spain: Francisco Brines Antonio Machado
Sudan: Tarek Eltayeb
Sweden: Tomas Tranströmer
Taiwan: Hsiang Ming Pai ch’iu
Taiwan: Karen Kung
Thailand: Nauwarat Pongpaibun
Turkey: Güseli Inal
Uraguay: Idea Vilariño
Uraguay: Mario Benedetti
Venezuela: Rafael Cadenas