Window Cleaner Sees Paintings

By Menno Wigman and Francis R. Jones

The master of pulsing, post-modern poetic rhythms, Menno Wigman's reputation is assured as one of the Netherlands' leading poets. And as perhaps his country's most exciting poet in terms of form: "a craftsman who knows what he wants" in the words of poet Alfred Schaffer. Wigman's second collection won him the Netherlands' coveted Jan Campert prize.
Menno Wigman's first full collection to be published in the UK in David Colmer's outstanding translation introduces English-language readers to a selection of the work of one of the Netherlands' leading poets. Some-times referred to as a 'dandy of disillusion', Wigman combines a classic aesthetic with rock-'n-roll subject matter to sing of sex and booze, vandalism, frustration, poetry and death. Yet despite his unflinching gaze at the grimmer sides of life, Wigman rarely writes grim poems. On the contrary, they are charged with a strong sense of social commitment and human sympathy for the marginalized and forgotten in contemporary society, and tempered with a wryness of tone and a punchy accessibility of style.
Wigman's voice in the English language is startling and unexpected, and as such, makes a deep and lasting impact. As Francis Jones says at the conclusion of his introduction to this book: "Wigman's poetry is a powerful brew in Dutch. Remixed in Colmer's English, it's heady stuff too."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Release date: Jan 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781910345634

Book preview

CONTENTS

Introduction

Translator’s Preface

from ’s Zomers stinken alle steden (1997)

from Zwart als kaviaar (2001)

from Dit is mijn dag (2004)

from De wereld bij avond (2006)

from De droefenis van copyrettes (2009)

from Mijn naam is Legioen (2012)

from Slordig met geluk (2016)

Notes

Biographical Notes

POST-PUNK DRUMMER, DARK ROMANTIC, DANDY OF DISILLUSION?

THE POETRY OF MENNO WIGMAN

Far and away the best poet of his generation. [1] This was the reaction of fellow Dutch poet Ingmar Heytze to Menno Wigman’s 1997 debut volume, s’ Zomers stinken alle steden (All Cities Stink in Summer). The recognition has continued. Wigman’s second collection, Zwart als kaviaar (Black as Caviar), won him the Netherlands’ coveted Jan Campert Poetry Prize in 2001. Now, five more collections have followed, plus a two-year tenure as City Poet for Central Amsterdam, and the 2015 triennial A. Roland Holst prize for his poetic oeuvre. Menno Wigman’s reputation is assured as one of the Netherlands’ leading poets. And as perhaps his country’s most exciting poet in terms of form: a craftsman who knows what he wants, in the words of poet Alfred Schaffer.

There’s a back-story to this. It’s no coincidence that Wigman, the master of pulsing, post-modern poetic rhythms, was a drummer in a late-70s teenage punk band. Still in his teens, he also edited a zine about music and anti-establishment politics. Here he not only wrote most of the articles, but also increasingly included his own poems. And several self-published collections followed before his work appeared with leading Amsterdam literary publisher Bert Bakker in 1997.

Wigman’s vision, especially in his earlier poems, may seem post-punk – harsh but stylish, modern, urban. His work, however, is rooted in a longer and wider poetic tradition. He has published several anthologies of Dutch poetry, and in poems and interviews he references twentieth-century master poets Hendrik Marsman and J. Slauerhoff. The latter, in fact, supplied the epigraph for ‘Rien ne va plus’ in this English-language collection. Moreover, Wigman has translated several volumes of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry: Rainer Maria Rilke, Leopold Andrian and Else Lasker-Schüler from German. Plus, tellingly for his own work, Charles Baudelaire and Gérard de Nerval from French. In 1998 he also published a collection of French decadent poetry: Wees altijd dronken! (Always be drunk!).

In a 2001 interview, Eric Brus asked Wigman if he would call himself a romantic decadent. Perhaps – but more a dark romantic in the