width=61 height=87> Germain Droogenbroodt
Featured Poet


 

Germain Droogenbroodt is a poet, translator, publisher and promoter of modern international poetry. So far he has written eight poetry books and translated more than thirty collections of German, Italian, Spanish, English and French poetry, including anthologies of Bertolt Brecht, Reiner Kunze, Peter Huchel, Miguel Hernández, José Ángel Valente, Francisco Brines and Juan Gil-Albert and rendered Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Persian and Korean poetry into Dutch.

As founder and editor of POINT Editions (POetry INTernational) he has published more than eighty collections of mainly modern, international poetry, including an anthology of modern poets from Taiwan, published in Dutch, English and German. Together with the Chinese poets-in-exile Bei Dao and Duo Duo he set up a new poetic movement, called neo-sensacionismo.

Germain Droogenbroodt organised and co-organised several international poetry festivals in Spain. His INTERNET project “Planetary Consciousness”, publishing poetry by important poets from all over the world, has been visited over 80.000 times. He is advisor of the Crane Summit 21st Century International (Poetry) Forum and of the International Poetry Festivals in Rosario (Argentina) and Granada (Nicaragua), member of jury of the biennial Denting Poetry Prize, Taiwan, advisor of the Pan-European Poetry Festivals and member of the board of World Congress of Poets. He is also reviewing editor of the “Contemporary Poetry”, the oldest Chinese poetry magazine in Hong Kong.

His poetic oeuvre is many-sided. After his début with “FORTY AT THE WALL” (1984), defined as neo-romantic poetry, he published “Do you know the country?”, Meditations at Lake Como (Italy), a collection of nature poems. In 1995 he was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship (Scotland) where he wrote “CONVERSATION WITH THE HEREAFTER”, poems about death, awarded with the P.G. Buckinx-Prize and “PALPABLE ABSENCE”, a bilingual (Dutch-Spanish) collection of love poems. A critic of the Dutch Information Office for Libraries described his love poems as “virtuoso poetry”. At the end of 1997 appeared “TWENTY-FIVE AND TWO LOVE POEMS”, and in 1998 “BETWEEN THE SILENCE OF YOUR LIPS”, his collected love poems.

During his sojourn at the Palace-Fortress “Neemrana” in Rajasthan he completed the poetry cycle “THE ROAD”, a poetic bridge between the East and the West, inspiring the Flemish artist Frans Minnaert and Satish Gupta, who enriched “The Road” with their drawings. This rather philosophical, mystical poetry is so far his most popular book, published already in more than 16 languages, translated by such famous poets at Bei Dao (Chinese), Fuad Rifka (Arabic), Jana Stroblova and Josef Hruby (Czech), Milan Richter (Slovak), Emilio Coco (Italian), Ganga Prasad Vimal (Hindi), Mongolian etc.

In 2001 he wrote in Spanish “AMANECE EL CANTOR” (The Singer Awakes), a homage to the deceased poet José Ángel Valente, followed by “COUNTERLIGHT” written in Ronda (Southern Spain) in 2002. This book has been published in Spain by Calima Ediciones, in Romania by ex Ponto, in Belgium by POINT Editions, in both Mongolian languages by GCompress Co., Ltd. Ulaanbaatar, in Arab by Albayat (Morocco), in Hong Kong by “Contemporary Poetry”, and in Taiwan by Poet Culture. Corp. “Counterlight” has been awarded “Best Book of Foreign Poetry” at the International Book Fair by the Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania in 2004.

Germain Droogenbroodt is frequently invited to give recitals and conferences at universities and international poetry festivals all over the globe. He has been honoured with a Doctor of Literature, h.c. in Egypt in 1990. In 2006 Germain Droogenbroodt was awarded the Pegasus Prize for his translations of international poetry by the Mongolian Academy of Culture and Poetry where his latest poetry collections have been published in English and in both Mongolian scripts.

A sample of Mr. Droogenbroodt's work follows. You can learn more about this poet by following the links at the end of this document.


 


Actaeon *

			
LOOKING AT HER
the body petrified
not the eye
		
Diana. With breasts
more beautiful than  the mountains
of Beotia reflecting
in the evening glow.

Come my love, 
spoke the woman, come
and showed it all.
And artless he went
light as a deer

trusting the dogs
trusting the goddess.
Ronda, 12.3.96

* Hunter from Beotia. As punishment to watch the
goddess of hunt while bathing, he was transformed
into a deer and devoured by his own dogs. 	

Copyright © Germain Droogenbroodt


Links:



 

 



 
 

Archives   Search   Terms   About   Submit   Link Exchange   Poetry Links   Newsletter   Contents   Home