Bert Schierbeek Memorial

As you die
you meet the light
of before creation

—Bert Schierbeek

Where to begin, at the beginning with a commemorative book to Bert Schierbeek. In the beginning was light, at the crematorium, the poets of the world paid homage to the fallen hero. We, the tribe, were 500 poets strong, but down one poet, we were 499 poets, we were both deluded and undiluted by light. Bert would've liked that pun.

Charles McGeehan, and I stood with the Dutch poets, wild-maned Jan Wolkers, a painter, Willem van Toorn and Simon Vinkenoog. I was well-sandwitched between corpulent Belgian poet, Hugo Claus, and Martin Mooij, who founded Poetry International in 1970.

Festival director, Martin Mooij, had invited Herman Berlandt and I to Poetry International. Herman founded Mother Earth Journal,; Uniting the world Through Poetry, an offshoot of San Francisco's National Poetry Week festival, which he also founded. (No, not Emma Goldman's anarchist rag, but the poems themselves are anarchists, focusing on the current political and ecological global crisis we're in.)

A musician played Route 66 on the trombone, it was a Beat poet homage moment. A woman placed poems on his coffin. We paraded past Bert one last time, someone left roses, we left a copy of Mother Earth Journal with Bert's poems in it. Bert was very supportive of our journal. When the crematorium doors opened, the furnaces roared like lions. We sent Bert, liberated from life, into the flames, the furnaces roared with joy.

We sent Bert off with words that burned like the stars; his coffin was a fiery arc in search of a new art form. We blanketed it with flowers and poems to offer Bert safe passage in order to meet the light that was born before creation. 

As we wept, Remco Campert read a final poem to Bert:

BERT 

So fragile
his legs
in his trousers
his chest
in his shirt
his hands bruised
from the work
of death
yet suddenly
a glimpse of a wink
never say die
let somebody else
say it
not Schierbeek.

     —(tr. Linde Voûte)

So much as happened in the past 24 hours, I hardly know where to begin. I did not expect to step off the plane to attend a funeral in Amsterdam. Joke (Yoka) Gerritsen of Poetry International told us last night during dinner. Schierbeek, a co-founder of the COBRA movement, died on June 9, right before the festival began. I knew Bert was sick—our host, Charles McGeehan had told us, but we fully expected to see him again. Upright.

Charles McGeehan, is Bert's brother-in-law, and translator; Charles' ex-wife was the sister of Bert's second wife, Margrait, who was killed in a car crash. Charles met us at Station Central, and we drove to the funeral.

I've met so many interesting people –Maija (I don't know her last name), whose brother is a famous actor, and whose father was a famous painter, I liked her so much on sight, I was sure she was both an artist and actor, but she has a studio for photographers, she is a makeup artist. Her art is other people's faces. She lives in Amsterdam, we will visit later, she said.

The reception was at the De Bezige Bij (Busy Bee) publishers. Poet and prolific columnist who writes for a daily newspaper, de Volkskrant, Rutger Copeland said he kept looking at me all through the service, trying to place me. I'm flattered that he was trying to figure out who I was. He probably saw me at Poetry International during previous years. Rutger was one of the famous Dutch poets my friend, and translator, Vins van Neerven, had told me about. 

Dutch poet Judith Herzog, who is a bit of a recluse was there (on previous visits, Vins wanted me to meet her but she kept brushing me off), along with Remco Campert, and one of the grand old Dutch poets, Dutch-American poet and doctor, Leo Vroman, and Toon Telegen—so many faces from Poetry International, on such a sad occasion. At the death of a poet, and such a beloved one.

I met the wife of the vice president of De Bezige Bij publishers, she was interested in our Mother Earth poetry project at, and the children's work I do. I will send her my Dutch translations of This Body is to Ask, perhaps I'll get it republished after all. 

The Holland connections are strong. I've had more cultural stimulation in 24 hours than I've had in the past two years in California.

Sipho Sepala was very pleased to get our magazine. He wanted an entire collector's set, he kept saying, I will learn much from these. Thank you. Thank you while hugging me. And so from one poet to another, the tradition of samizdat is alive and well.

Last night, Leo Vroman and I talked about the nature of physics poetry and the need for accuracy. Leo is a biochemist and hematology researcher, as well as an artist. Hematologists know of him because of a discovery named after him, called the Vroman Effect, which has to do with the attraction of blood proteins, he explained.

Leo was my dinner partner. We shared drawings. Herman and I were suffering from severe jet lag, as were American poet Barbara Goldberg, a translator, and Israeli poet, Moshe Dor from Tel Aviv. We were all practically sleeping on our dinner plates, so I drew in my journal in order to keep awake. Leo joined me.

We all went walking after dinner along the canals looking at the lights reflected thinking of Bert Schierbeek, thinking of how we let him go into the light, into the darkness and into the light. Welcome to Holland.

13 June 1996 Rotterdam, Poetry International
Quite a star-studded event.

See my article:
Poetry International AUDACIOUS TONGUES: THE HEART OF TRANSLATION

rev. from journal notes 11/2/2015

Poetry International journal, more networking

17 Thursday. I took photos of Lars Gustafson, Charles Simiç, and Rutger Kopeland, and some of my drawings are coming out OK. I draw in between headshots. A woman came up to me afterwards and said, you were transfixed by Rutger Kopeland weren’t you? I asked, was it that obvious? She said yes. The photographer took a photo of you too. It was so funny when Lars read a poem about a photo, he said click! just as I clicked; he looked at me sideways, and the audience laughed.

I missed the Chilean poet, oh well. I have two more nights. I was supposed to stay in Rotterdam because the metro is locked at midnight, before the readings are over. My friend Vins was a bit pissy, cranky and blue, because it’s his birthday and he was upset the whole night long. 

The big antique mirror we scored one night on the street, fell off the wall and shattered. Ominous. Glass like escaped ghosts, everywhere. So I made him a cupcake, and brought him roses and chocolate; it helped to ease the pain a bit. Anyway, I arrived late for the evening reading, but I was in time for the second set so it was OK.

Lars has performed with Poetry International four times. He was part of the first event in 1971. We went to the hospitality room afterwards and definitely that’s where the action is and where the networking happens. Leo Vroman showed me a copy of a most unusual book he made with overlays, etc. He also does some visual poetry. 

Karoly Bari and I had a strange double-translated conversation from English to Russian with Dmitri Prigov until he got the bright idea to speak to him directly in Russian; he gave me several poems already translated into English for our magazine. I also gave Dmitri Prigov copy of Glasnost. He knew many of the poets we had published and promised to get them copies. We actually did translate and print two of his poems and he admitted they were from the late 70s. I was surprised as they are totally different than, his sound poetry which borders on gibberish.

Ilya Kutek also gave me some poems as did Marjan Meijer. I gave Marjan a copy of my poems, but I don’t know if it’s particularly useful. I didn’t have flyers so I don’t know how to spell their last names. I told Rutger Kopeland that I liked his poetry, but his books were so expensive. He said to tell the bookseller to give me a copy for 20 gilders. I’m thrilled by his generosity.

One bookseller was enchanted with my student anthologies, she wants to take 10 copies to see how it will sell, with a 25 percent commission and she will pay postage. Wow. I also got a tentative job offer to work in South Africa at Durban University if they can get funding for a poetry festival. I take it all in stride, lucrative, or not. 

Someone told me that the California CPITS program makes them envious. I said that I’m here to teach poets how to do it; I just can’t seem to make contact. Naochem Winberg and Charles Simiç overheard me as they went to get wine and he handed me two glasses. His work is very mythic, but it’s more like a mini play with objects. Very surreal.

I asked Leo Vroman for a copy of his visual poem that was in the newspaper. I made a tentative date with Victor Manuel to go to the museum tomorrow, but he wasn’t sure. He had to work on translations, he reads tomorrow night.

After midnight we all went over to the all night staging of Derek Walcott’s play, Omeros, but it was in Dutch. Some of the poets read on the radio. The theater is also a live radio show. Wild. The play is in seven parts, and last until 7 AM, so there are videos and banquets going on simultaneously as the play and radio program air. Also, there are installation pieces shrines of sorts to Derek. 

I stayed till 1:30 AM and got bored and then went to the metro but everything was locked up tight so I couldn’t get to Ton’s place, and since I had a train ticket back to Amsterdam, home it was.

I made tentative plans to meet with Victor tomorrow and/or go touring with Herman and Ton and now it looks like I won’t be able to do either. Victor Manuel Mendiola said he wasn’t going to the Omeros play, and as I walked out of the theater into the lobby, a small hole in the crowd opened and we spotted each other, and there we were, dodging around bodies to verify each other with our eyes. It was pretty comical, but he was busy with the translator, so I didn’t join him.

Leo Vroman introduced me to Dutch-Israeli poet Judith Herzberg, we were a little stiff, since I had tried to make contact with her in October and she blew me off. Maybe I was stiffer than I needed to be, but I felt put off by her, and really had nothing to say to her. I surely didn’t feel like gushing. We shook hands formally, and that was it. I think I do better with the Dutch poets as they like to hang out. They are more gezellig. Not Judith.