Hans Van de Waarsenburg HAS DIED

The poet can’t help writing poetry and time can’t help taking him for granted. Rest in peace, dear friend. – Benno Barnard

Terribly sad news. The brilliant Dutch poet Hans Van de Waarsenburg has died. I loved him. He was brilliant, kind, generous, funny, and a great friend to poets world-wide. Dutch poet Hans van de Waarsenburg was born in Helmond in1943, and has died in 2015, June 15. He published his first collection of poems, Gedichten (Poems), 50 years ago, in 1965. His collection De vergrijzing (The graying) was awarded the prestigious Jan Campert Prize for Poetry in 1973. In March 2004 he received the first Municipal Award of the Helmond Town Council for his entire work. Between 1997 and 2000 he was chairman of the PEN Centre of the Netherlands. In 1997 he became chairman of The Maastricht International Poetry Nights - an impressive biannual international poetry festival. In 2013 Eyewear published his Selected Poems in English, translated by Peter Boreas, The Past Is Never Dead. We launched it at a gala event in Bloomsbury at which over 100 people attended.

'Hans van de Waarsenburg is quietly working on an impressive oeuvre. He possesses great technical skills, which he uses to vary and intensify his standard themes and motifs. He is no innovator, nor does he slavishly follow the latest fads. Neither is he a poet who forces himself on our attention in that loud entourage which more and more replaces literature itself. Loyalty is the key to Van de Waarsenburg’s work. His poetry expresses a loyalty to the people around him, loyalty to their motives and desires. He has an eye for their vulnerability, their futility and their restrictions. It is first of all expressed in the earnest and careful way in which he uses language. Thus a careful listener hears an individual and unmistakable voice rising from the poetry.' — Hans Groenewegen