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POETRY | NEDERLANDS
Sonate 1987
Vier Sonetten in Dialoog met Grafisch Werk van Marleen Matthys
I wrote the present poetry collection (in Dutch) in the fall of 1987, at the closure of what I had experienced as a “summer of discontent” in my relationship at the time. The poems are written in dialogue with ink drawings by Marleen Matthys. With the help of her husband Stefaan Traen, Marleen and I self-published the collection in a portfolio with eight sheets and a title page, bookmarked Brugge 1987, with the four hand-written poems and four plates. There were one hundred copies — most of them given away for free to friends, while a few got sold to benefactors.
All this is nearly 40 years ago now. I recently came across my one leftover copy in a lost box in the basement of Bayt al-Andalus, the heritage house in Antwerpen, Belgium, where I have left behind my library, archives, musical instruments, and, most painful of all, our precious fern garden — before Michaela and I boldly moved on and settled in equatorial Singapore. Most probably, of the friends with whom we shared this work at the time, very few are left who ever take the time to think back of our brazen young years exploits.
