Words are the Worst: Selected Poems

Born in 1968 in The Hague, Erik Lindner is one of the Netherland’s most acclaimed poets. Admired for a style that fuses simplicity with strangeness, Lindner builds his poems through a montage of descriptive images that, by fending off closure, generate extraordinary visionary power. Gathering together new work with a selection from his previous six collections, Words are the Worst offers a range of pleasures that have made him celebrated in his home country: an austere eloquence; a hard, unsparing precision; a restless and idiosyncratic eye. Best of all is how his intensely filmic observations transform haunted landscapes of windmills, birds, dogs, and houseboats on canals into, as one critic put it, “Lindner-like” moments. Brilliantly translated by Francis R. Jones, with an introduction by Canadian poet David O’Meara, Words are the Worst introduces a leading Dutch voice to English readers.

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Words are the Worst: Selected Poems

Born in 1968 in The Hague, Erik Lindner is one of the Netherland’s most acclaimed poets. Admired for a style that fuses simplicity with strangeness, Lindner builds his poems through a montage of descriptive images that, by fending off closure, generate extraordinary visionary power. Gathering together new work with a selection from his previous six collections, Words are the Worst offers a range of pleasures that have made him celebrated in his home country: an austere eloquence; a hard, unsparing precision; a restless and idiosyncratic eye. Best of all is how his intensely filmic observations transform haunted landscapes of windmills, birds, dogs, and houseboats on canals into, as one critic put it, “Lindner-like” moments. Brilliantly translated by Francis R. Jones, with an introduction by Canadian poet David O’Meara, Words are the Worst introduces a leading Dutch voice to English readers.

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Words are the Worst: Selected Poems

Words are the Worst: Selected Poems

Words are the Worst: Selected Poems

Words are the Worst: Selected Poems

Overview

Born in 1968 in The Hague, Erik Lindner is one of the Netherland’s most acclaimed poets. Admired for a style that fuses simplicity with strangeness, Lindner builds his poems through a montage of descriptive images that, by fending off closure, generate extraordinary visionary power. Gathering together new work with a selection from his previous six collections, Words are the Worst offers a range of pleasures that have made him celebrated in his home country: an austere eloquence; a hard, unsparing precision; a restless and idiosyncratic eye. Best of all is how his intensely filmic observations transform haunted landscapes of windmills, birds, dogs, and houseboats on canals into, as one critic put it, “Lindner-like” moments. Brilliantly translated by Francis R. Jones, with an introduction by Canadian poet David O’Meara, Words are the Worst introduces a leading Dutch voice to English readers.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781550655834
Publisher: Vehicule Press
Publication date: 03/01/2022
Pages: 80
Product dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

Francis R. Jones translates poetry from Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Hungarian, Russian, and Dutch. His translations have received many important UK and international awards, and is the only translator to have won the UK's biennial European Poetry Translation Prize twice. Professor of Translation Studies at Newcastle University, Jones lives in rural Northumberland.

Erik Lindner is a Dutch poet, writer, and literary critic. His first book of poetry, Tramontane, appeared in 1996. Five more collections have followed, including two novels. His work has been translated into French, German, and Italian. Words are the Worst: Selected Poems is his first volume of poetry in English.

David O'Meara lives in Ottawa, Ontario. He is the author of four collections of poetry and a play, Disaster. He's been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit Prize, the Trillium Book Award, a National Magazine Award, four Rideau Awards, and he won the Archibald Lampman Award twice. His most recent book is A Pretty Sight (Coach House, 2013).

Table of Contents

Introduction 7

Words are the Worst 13

Island 14

Reason 16

18 September 1994 17

Ourcq 21

"If I'm lost for words" 22

Tokens of Identity 23

"There's blood in your lips" 29

To Acedia 30

The Tramontane 33

In Zeeland 34

Ostende 35

"The garden lies between the road and the window" 37

"A man is eating an apple in the park" 38

Back from Acedia 39

"The sea is purple at Piraeus" 43

"A stairway leads into the sea" 44

Klockmann 45

"A short woman holds an umbrella high above her head" 46

"In the storm that just blew up" 47

"This form fits somewhere" 48

"When I walk toward the sea" 49

Ivens and the Wind 50

"I remember" 51

Witnesses at the Threshold 52

Acedia 56

From Wake 57

Seraing 58

Man in the Water 68

Rowers on Lake Aa 70

"Light-lines on the horizon pull the sea into the sky" 80

"Alarmed by a constant throbbing across the soundscape" 81

"The wind pushes you back onto the island" 82

"Everything hangs dead level, the waning" 83

Translating Erik Lindner's Poems 85

Notes 90

Acknowledgments 93

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Related Subjects

Poetry
European Poetry
Other European Poetry
European poetry
Poetry
European Poetry
Other European Poetry
European poetry

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