Meet Marjolijn van Heemstra

Marjolijn van Heemstra is a poet, writer and theatre maker who recently became Amsterdam’s poet laureate. Her vocation is to ask questions, out loud. Her apparently limitless fascination with the unfathomable dimensions of the universe seduces us all into wondering in awe at how all that vastness resonates in our insignificant existence. In her poetry, asking the question is infinitely more important than any answer. This creates a breathtaking boundlessness that gives us the scope to see and move beyond the confines of the human. A constant dual awareness, in which life takes place in the omnipresence of death, echoes through her most recent collection Reistijd, Bedtijd, IJstijd. The juxtaposition of these contradictions gives time a cyclical aspect and the body, which carries within it all possible perspectives, acts as a knot, tying up all those temporal entanglements. Van Heemstra is able to adjust the scale of her view like no other, thereby adjusting our view, and scaling everything within us.

Host: Tsead Bruinja