Marwin Vos
(Netherlands, 1962) is a poet and visual artist. Her collection oorlogspaarden tot in de buitenwijken (War Horses up to the Suburbs, 2015) was nominated for the J.C. Bloem Prize, and the impressive collection het leven van sterren (Life of Stars, 2019) for the 2020 De Grote Poëzieprijs, major Dutch poetry award. In wilde dood (Wild Death, 2022), Vos writes about death and loss while noting, "settlers don't want to give up the climate." In the book, she seeks a politics of mourning, evoking the extinction of animals and the destruction of habitats: "the political nakedness of mourners / unfolding into an island a tongue." Also this book is nominated for the Grote Poëzieprijs 2023 for which the winner will be announced 17 May 2023. Vos' words were performed by actress and theatre maker Caro Derkx and dancer and artist Irina Baldini in a special way during the 2003 Winternachten festival programme De grondstof van het gedicht.
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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, Maarten van der Graaff, 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 seeked 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) was 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 MichaÃ"l Slory, the minerals themselves bear witness to that history:
â€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.â€("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 â€" including signing opportunities!
De grondstof van het gedicht was curated by poet and writer Maarten van der Graaff.