So yesterday night I was at De Waag to look at the work of the 12 poets/designers of the Poëzie op het scherm-project of the Fonds voor de Letteren (http://www.fondsvoordeletteren.nl/). Lots of people I know somehow, from the new media scene, Mediamatic or even, from years back, Perdu. Many people attended, no chairs and no beer crates left to sit on. I enjoyed all the works shown (though there were definitely differences in quality), but personally was most struck by the work of Rozalie Hirs (http://www.rozalie.com/) and Harm van den Dorpel (http://www.harmlog.nl/, look at Tekstverschijning geestschrijver).

I’ll have to write an article about it for the newsletter of the Fonds voor de Letteren — so I have made many notes. The notes are an absolute chaos, so they’re not fit yet to be put up here.

Therefore I will lend the words of Carolien Euser (she was on the panel discussing the works), who, after the presentations were over, said to me ‘I’m not interested in possibilities, I’m interested in choices.’ I totally agree with her. Making choices is what making art (and also new media poetry) is about, knowing exactly what you’re doing and why. Not any gratuitous exploration of possibilities for the sake of exploration. We’re beyond that stage. And these poets knew, even when they were just beginning to scratch the surface (as was sometimes true), that it’s about making choices.

Samuel Vriezen (“the frolicsome composer from hell”) — who of course was also present — has a nice piece about Poëzie op het scherm on his ‘nagelnieuwe’ blog: http://blogger.xs4all.nl/sqv.

(Which makes one think again on the amount — and high quality — of the poetry-blogs in both the Dutch-speaking countries and the USA. Poets blog so much more than other writers, it seems. I will get back to this…)

(Which makes me think as well that putting up a linkslist should be priority number one now — especially since I see that Geert Lovink now links me — thanks Geert!)

a few more links, relevant in this context (not exhaustive, sorry to those I’m not including here…):

Paul Bogaert: http://www.paulbogaert.be
Ted van Lieshout: http://home.wanadoo.nl/tedvanlieshout/
Hans Kloos: http://home.hetnet.nl/~kolos/
Joke van Leeuwen: http://www.jokevanleeuwen.com/
Rozalie Hirs: http://www.rozalie.com/
Harm van den Dorpel: http://www.harmlog.nl/
Niels Schrader: http://www.nielsschrader.de/
Tonnus Oosterhoff: http://www.tonnusoosterhoff.nl/
Mark Boog: http://www.markboog.nl/poetryinmotion.html