Lieke Marsman will be the Poet of the Father for the next two years. She will close to national events and act as ambassador of poetry.
Marsman (30) was elected by a committee of nine poesiders to succeed Tsead Bruinja. She has four poetry collections and a novel in her name. Her first work, What I love to tell myself from 2010, was awarded the C. Buddingh Prize among others.
According to the committee, Marsman โconnects tenderness to transparency, erudition to humour and simplicity to depthโ. โMarsmans political and feminist charged lyrics and performances also have an effect on a larger audience.โ According to the experts, the poet knows โalways to put her finger on the sore spot in societyโ.
Dor wood
The new Poet of the Father wants to be a voice of the โbarren woodโ, she says in an interview with NRC, one of the initiators of the title. In Marsman, cartilage cancer was detected in 2017. Shes on chemo indefinitely.
โ It is a time of illness,โ says Marsman, โand all the sick and weak people have been practically written off in the past year, as dry wood. Well, I cant really be dearer than I am right now, but that doesnt mean I have no ambitions anymore, no dreams. And like me, there are thousands of people in the Netherlands.โ
Marsman is the eighth Poet of the Country, a title first awarded in 2000. Shes being installed in Tilburg tonight.