Mensen Zeggen Dingen x Writers Unlimited Festival

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Writers Unlimited Festival and Mensen Zeggen Dingen - platform for poetry and performance - joined forces and words! In GR8 Theater, we brought you a party full of poetry, poetry slam, prose and punchlines with a musical note. Besides Dutch spoken-word artists Sabina Lukovic, Duimalot, Hasan Gök and Damaris, two of the festival's international authors let their voices be heard: George Abraham (United States) and Rosabelle Illes (Aurba). Host: Dean Bowen!

Festival tip: you headed to the festival opening at Theater aan het Spui on Thursday night 23 January first! From 19:30, saw performances and readings by Ukraine's leading writer Andrei Kurchov, British author/stand-up comedian Viv Groskop and South African writer Resoketswe Manenzhe, among others. Afterwards, with anyone who wants to join us, we took a 'spoken word walk' (of around 15 minutes) to GR8 to arrive in time for the start of Mensen Zeggen Dingen x Writers Unlimited Festival, On our way there we made a couple of short stops to watch performances by poet and spoken word artist Hasan Gök. 

Mensen Zeggen Dingen speaks out, starts conversations, puts exclamation marks or question marks! The poetry and performance platform has been a welcome and regular guest for ten years, with club shows in venues including Paard (The Hague), Theater Bellevue (Amsterdam), Tivoli Vredenburg (Utrecht), Doornroosje (Nijmegen) and festivals such as Lowlands, Down The Rabbit Hole, Zwarte Cross and Writers Unlimited Festival.


Festival tip 2: for the full festival experience, yo0u went to the grand festival events Friday Night Unlimited (24 January 2025) and Saturday Night Unlimited (25 January 2025)! Both nights you chose your own route along some 20 performances, readings and conversations on five stages in Theater aan het Spui and Filmhuis Den Haag. English and Dutch spoken.

Festivaltip 3: as Writers Unlimited reached 30 years of making festivals, we celebrated our anniversary with a show full of music, dance and literature at Amare (Danstheater) on Sunday afternoon, 26 January 2025. You saw and heard Spinvis, Shirma Rouse, XILLAN, Babs Gons, Joost Oomen, Zaïre Krieger, Claudia Karapanou Flamenco Trio, Royal Conservatoire Dance and Pulse led by Eli Wing, among others. Tickets 11 euros (under 29s or students), or 16 - 35 euros (depending on seat chosen).


From 23 to 26 January 2025, Writers Unlimited International Literature Festival The Hague was to be found in theatres, libraries and schools throughout the city: from Theater aan het Spui, Filmhuis Den Haag, Amare and Paard to Theater Dakota, Theater De Vaillant, the Nieuw Waldeck, Schilderswijk and Ypenburg libraries and De Haagse Hogeschool. With over 120 writers, poets and spoken-word artists and musicians from the Netherlands and abroad. With readings, prose, poetry, storytelling, spoken word, author interviews, topical talks, films and music.

Information

Date and time Thursday 23 January 2025 from 21:30 to 23:30 hrs
Location GR8 Theater
Price 8,-

Line-up

Rosabelle Illes

(Aruba, 1987) is an artist, writer, and performer. She has authored three collections of poetry and short stories and co-authored the multilingual children’s book Hearty. Her work has been published in international journals, and she has performed at literary festivals worldwide, including Colombia, Taiwan, The Netherlands, and New York City. Rosabelle’s art often explores personal enigmas, with meditation revealing insights that manifest as poetry. She holds a PhD in Psychology from Leiden University and is an assistant professor at the University of Aruba. Her upcoming book, Penmanship (2025), blends her passions for psychology and poetry, celebrating the written word in its purest form. Featuring handwritten pieces, the book sparks a conversation about the scientifically proven benefits of handwriting and showcases how poetry can transcend traditional confines of the page to be heard, seen, and worn.
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George Abraham

(USA) is a Palestinian American poet, performance artist, and writer. They are the author of When the Arab Apocalypse Comes to America (Haymarket Books, 2026) and Birthright (2020) which won the Arab American Book Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. They edit for Mizna, a Southwest Asian and North African diasporic literary journal, and are co-editor of HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE US: Palestinian Poetry (Haymarket Books, 2025). Their current projects also include Eve, a performance project with Fargo Tbakhi re-imagining Milton's Paradise Lost through the lens of Palestinian resistance. They currently teach in Amherst College's English department as a Writer-in-Residence.
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Dean Bowen

(The Netherlands, 1984) is a poet, performer and events programmer. As evident 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 2019 and 2020 he was poet laureate of Rotterdam. Ik vond geen spoken in Achtmaal (I Found No Ghosts in Achtmaal, 2020) describes, via diary entries, poems, confessions, and rituals, the search for what remains of a person long after he has died. He has published poems on the online platforms SampleKanon and Hard//Hoofd and in magazines such as nY and Kunsttijdschrift Vlaanderen. He teaches performance literature and poetry at the Creative Writing programme at ArtEZ. Together with Flemish writer and musician Joost Hoekaf, he creates introspective hip hop in the Vudu Cru project. His next collection, Masc:r, will be published in January 2026.

Instagram: @dean_bowen
Instagram: @vudu.cru
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Sabina Lukovic

is a spoken word artist and knows better than anyone how to play the audience with her compelling words. She performed with Mensen Zeggen Dingen in all cities and at all festivals, such as Solar, Gentse Feesten and Lowlands. Sabina is queen punchline. She always knows how to sketch situations in such a way that they get under your skin and your skin can't avoid giving you goosebumps. Her lyrics are about vulnerability, mental health and rising like a phoenix. She is indispensable in the Mensen Zeggen Dingen army, going everywhere with us to blow audiences away. Because she does.
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Damaris

is a theatrical vocalist who performs written and/or spontaneous poetry. Like a freestyler, she follows the flow of her thoughts. Like a poet, her words lead to authentic concepts. Like an actress, she is fully absorbed in the moment. And like a singer, her voice can reveal the depths of her emotions.
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Duimalot

(Utrecht, 1995), real name Gary Gravenbeek, is an artist with a focus on music, theatre and dance. He has been rapping and dancing since he was seven years old. During high school, he chose dance as his training, while he remained active in the hip-hop scene, winning FunX's Basement Battles seven times, among others. His career in the theatre scene brought him successes such as the Zilveren Krekel Prize for Bloedlink and a role as choreographer and performer in Het Nationale Theater's Trojan Wars. With the release of the singles Zicht and OPGKRPT, and his debut EP Vriendendienst (2023), he has shifted his focus to music, while remaining active on both theatre and music stages with the core principles: creativity, musicality and impulsiveness.
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Hasan Gök

is a poet, spoken word artist and host. From his emotional world, he shares, vulnerably and sincerely, a social message that is often invisible. Stories about a diversity of worlds that converge in his own life: son of a Turkish father and a Kurdish mother, raised in Dutch society, queer and Muslim, lover of both the spotlights of the stage and the silence of the night. Hasan knows how to turn the search for a place in society into words and performances that confront but also invite. He feels a need to connect people and therefore shares human feelings and experiences that are often recognisable and yet remain unexpressed with sincere, unabashed, poetic and intimate work.
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20 May 2026

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Get your Early Bird tickets for the big festival nights, Friday & Saturday Night Unlimited!