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.
