Can I be guessed? Or can I be known
Can I be guessed? Or can I be known, broken down intomore than hair and skin, the sharpness of tooth and nail?A bird flies through the air, wings so wide that youcan count its outstretched feathers, but who decodes its call?Someone dancing nude in ballet shoes, arms spread,may still be hiding their soul behind a tiny tattoo. I haverooms with curtains drawn and nothing to conceal,attics and cellars with locks and codes I routinelyreveal by blushing out of the blue. At timesI crack my hanker like a walnut, showthe halves in open hands: see this I. And only Iknow the inimitable tumbling in my head.
Feature Date
- March 19, 2022
Series
- Translation
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English Copyright © 2021 by Vivien D. Glass.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Hester Knibbe was the poet laureate of the city of Rotterdam in 2015 and 2016. She chaired the Dutch PEN between 2008 and 2010, and published fifteen books of poetry to date, earning her a number of prestigious Dutch prizes, among which the Herman Gorter Prize (2000), the A. Roland Holst Prize (2009) and the VSB Poetry Prize (2015).
Vivien D. Glass is a literary translator from Dutch and German to English. She was born in Switzerland to Irish and Swiss parents before she moved to the Netherlands, where she completed a Bachelor’s degree at the ITV University of Applied Sciences for Translation and Interpreting. She currently lives and works in the beautiful medieval city of Amersfoort, and enjoys attending translation and creative writing workshops whenever her schedule allows. Her published translations include works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, children’s verse and more. She is particularly inspired by female poets and has translated work by Hagar Peeter, Hester Knibbe and Marieke Lucas Rijneveld among others.
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Andrew Lattimer
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