Dean Bowen
(The Netherlands, 1984) is a poet, performer and teacher. As apparent in his multilingual poetry collection Bokman (2018), his work looks at the relationship of people's identity to society. A strong performance won him the first Van Dale SPOKEN Award in the poetry category. In his Ik vond geen spoken in Achtmaal (I Found No Ghosts in Achtmaal, 2020), an unnamed figure describes through diary entries, poems, confessions, and rituals the search for what remains of a person, long after they have died. He has published poems on the online platforms SampleKanon and Hard//Hoofd and in magazines such as nY and Kunsttijdschrift Vlaanderen. Together with musician-artist Willie Darktrousers and with performers Martin Rombouts and Maxime Garcia Diaz, he created the music and spoken word performance Poetic Resistance: a poetic indictment of anger and resistance. Can a demonstration be a poem, a manifesto an art object? Especially for the closing programme of Winternachten festival 2023, they will make new work together in response to the question: what is the raw material of the poem?
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Archive available for: Dean Bowen
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De grondstof van het gedicht (The raw material of poems)
With: Alara Adilow, Asha Karami, Caro Derkx, Dean Bowen, Irina Baldini, Johan van Dijke, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Martin Rombouts, Marwin Vos, Maxime Garcia Diaz, Mustafa Stitou, Willie Darktrousers
For the closing event of the 2023 Winternachten festival, poets and artists seek out the raw material of poems. How do the violence of resource extraction, the destruction of lives and worlds, and the depletion of Earth become audible and palpable in language? What are poems made of: can they, too, plunder and harm?
De grondstof van het gedicht (The raw material of poems) is a Dutch-language event with familiar and new voices, unexpected performances, dance, music and images.
Anyone who opens a children's book about a farm does not see hyper-modern, destructive industry, but lovely scenes. This obfuscation of reality, according to British zoologist, author and activist George Monbiot, is due to persistent images about our dealings with animals and land, borrowed from poetry. "One of the greatest threats to life on Earth is poetry," he wrote provocatively.
Yet the plundering of Earth has indeed made its way into modern poetry. In the poem Sinaasappel, bitter je schil (Orange, bitter your peel) by Surinamese poet Michaël Slory, the minerals themselves bear witness to that history:
'Op Afobaka wil ik zijn
als de arbeiders staken,
de morgen zich boort
in de papaya,
het bauxiet woedend zingt
over zoveel misbruik,
zoveel leugens
zoveel misleiding.'("On Afobaka I want to be
when the workers strike,
the morning drills itself
into the papaya,
the bauxite sings furiously
about so much abuse,
so many lies
so much deception.")Bookstore De Vries van Stockum will be present in the lobby with a stand offering books by participating authors of this programme, among others including signing opportunities!
De grondstof van het gedicht was curated by poet and writer Maarten van der Graaff.
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Poems from the Berber Library
Poets Dean Bowen, Anne Vegter and Joost Baars recited Berber poetry on the occasion of the completion of the Berber Library. This is a collection of works by the most important authors of Berber heritage. At the initiative of writer Asis Aynan and translator Hester Tollenaar, ten books have been published in Dutch translation. And as a finale, the volume Vallende Tijd (Falling Time) brought together work of the four greatest Rif poets: Mohammed Chacha, Ahmed Ziani, Fadma el Ouariachi and Mimoun el Walid. Their poetry celebrates love, detests migration and screams for emancipation.
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Writing poetry in Dunglish and other languages
How can literature challenge language? Besides Mandarin and Spanish, English is the most-spoken language in the world. It is a language of power, of mass culture, of imperialism and domination, but also a language expressing solidarity, activism and understanding, in which the underpinnings of power can be attacked: a language of the majority full of minority languages.
What is the role of English in the poetry being written in the Netherlands and Belgium? Writers Unlimited put this question to seven young poets writing in English, in Dutch, in Dutch as well as English, who write multilingual poetry, who live in the Netherlands and Belgium, who were born 'here' or not.
What is the status of English in their poetry? Each has written a new poem especially for the festival: Veva Leye, Dean Bowen, Samira Saleh, Mia You en Caglar Koseoglu; also Joost Baars and Charlotte Van den Broeck, both nominated for the VSB Poetry Prize 2018, take part and react with their work. The VSB Poetry Prize 2018 will be awarded shortly after the Festival, on Thursday, 25 January, at the Diligentia Theatre in The Hague.
