Piet Gerbrandy

(The Hague, NL, 1958) is a poet, translator, essayist, classicist, and poetry critic. At the festival he will recieve the 2014 Jan Campert Prize for his book Vlinderslag (Stroke of the Butterfly) which the jury called "a grand synthesis of all of Gerbrandy's earlier experiments." In it, the author combines different genres such as lyrical poetry, prose poetry, and poetic essays. The language is mannered, gruff, short of articles, melancholy, but also humorous. Vlinderslag is an antiphony in which a thoughtful narrator muses about wind, rust, and a woman who runs into the sea; a lyrical poet sings about mulberries, stock market drops, and insomnia; and a sober commentator points out social trends. Gerbrandy studied classical languages and comparative Indo-European linguistics and now teaches Latin at the University of Amsterdam. He has written essays for De Groene Amsterdammer magazine since 1993. He later became the poetry critic at the Volkskrant newspaper. In 2009 he earned his PhD on the poetry of H. H. ter Balkt and Jacques Hamelink. Gerbrandy is the grandson of former prime minister Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy.