A Walk on the Wild Square

Poetry of the 1980s and 1990s

By Paul Demets

In the poem ‘Carillon’ from Het wilde plein (‘The Wild Square’, an anthology of the work of Tomas Tranströmer translated by J. Bernlef) the poet stays in a filthy hotel in Bruges, the Flemish Venice of the North, and looks out the window:

Outside a pedestrian street moves past
with slow tourists, quick schoolchildren, men in working clothes, pushing rattling cycles. Those who think they make the world revolve and those who think
they’re spinning helplessly in the grip of the earth. A street we all walk down, where does it lead?
The room’s only window looks out on some thing else:
The Wild Square,
a seething patch of ground, a great trembling expanse, now full
of people, now empty.

This poem could serve as a metaphor for the colourful turmoil found in Dutch-language poetry at the moment. Poets of all ages, with widely differing poetics, move past, wander round the square, sit on a terrace to get a better view. Others seem to be absorbed in animated conversation with themselves or prefer to survey events from behind glass.