Article
Moving target – Micha Hamel
(Atlas-Contact, 2013)
(Atlas-Contact, 2013)
Moving target
November 18, 2013
Restaurant
The fish stocks dictate no monkfish
so I choose an ostrich steak instead.
A ladybird saunters right to the tip
of an orange drinking straw.
A mouse shoots under the swing doors
through to the white steaming kitchen.
Eagerly knife and fork lie beside
an ivory-coloured square plate.
Bluebottle covers an unparalleled
course past lamps and tables.
‘Roasted dodo, sir?’ the waiter
asks in surprise. The lobsters in the
aquarium heave a sigh of relief.
My drink is imitating a lime.
Micha Hamel
from Bewegend doel
(translation by Willem Groenewegen)
It is amazing that the poems in Moving target by Micha Hamel manage to remain on the page. Anyone who reads the collection soon discovers that the poems contain more movement than paper should be able to cope with. Being drawn into the poems means being carried along with all kinds of thoughts and associations. Before you know it you will have leapt from a cloyingly-sweet photo to a landslide of questions and from purple underpants to the reasoning-machine in the shape of an advocate’s office. What is so striking is that all the dynamism does not serve to stress the impalpability of reality or to allow what began as a poem to leap out explosively in all directions, no, the dynamics of Hamel always gravitates towards a clear picture, towards a conclusion. It is not a kind of conclusion that helps to unravel the mysteries of the world or of mankind and his feelings. It is rather a conclusion that shows how all the thoughts set in motion in the poem have taken on all their possible guises proving that the poem is finally complete. As Micha Hamel himself once said in an interview, ‘I am always keen to finish things, I write to get things out of the way’.
The poet does that conscientiously and without deploying deregulatory weaponry. The poems are full of contrast and curious twists and turns, but the language and the sentence structures remain on track and are good and easy to follow. Much of the language used in the collection is very familiar to one, there are turns of phrase that we recognize, but the contexts into which they are placed are new. ‘When I am dead, will you then preserve my soul / in a cool and dark place ‘I ask / of the green person sat opposite me / who is sipping a cup of mint tea’? The contrasting atmospheres that Hamel so effectively produces in his poems are always witty, sometimes hilarious but nevertheless not devoid of sadness.
The I-figure presented by the poet wonders (when conversing with a mammoth in the similarly titled poem) how he can extricate himself from the ‘ocean of pointless petty facts and draw up / one truth with which I can change my daughter’s mind?’
Many words are certainly required to express that which, just like feelings and memories ‘each and every one of them gradually force me to speak about the moving target that I am’. It is only in the concurring representation of all those messy thoughts full of hang-ups and stubborn memories, full of secret longings and incorrect self-images, full of the obstacles that family life, for example, has in store for us that the world allows itself to be reined in. Only after Pandora’s Box has been opened does the poet get the chance to place a full stop, invariably in sober fashion: ‘You are surely tired of all that talk. Shall I get something to drink?’
Micha Hamel (1970) is a composer-conductor and poet. He composes orchestral works, songs and chamber music and has also written for dance and theatre. In 2008 his tragic operetta Snow White (the National Travelling Opera) toured the country and was very successful. In June 2012 he was 'composer in focus' at the Holland Festival. He made his debut as a poet in 2004 with Alle enen opgeteld (‘All ones added up’). This collection won the Lucy B. & C.W. van der Hoogt Prize and soon saw two reprints. The collection Luchtwortels (‘Air roots’) appeared in 2006, in 2010 came Nu je het vraagt (‘Now that you ask’), and finally, in 2013, Bewegend doel (‘Moving target’). At the moment he is working on a series of articles about the future of classical music and on a melodrama for the theatrical company Orkater.
Micha Hamel has discovered gold; so evident and rich is his musical linguistic universe that it really is like something discovered. He drags himself and the reader by the hair along the abysses of modern existence. Every form is queried, thus becoming a moving target. Hamel handles many registers with great virtuosity, with apparent ease and that extends to encompass his negativity and cultural pessimism in relation to the present. He never thematizes any of those things in any conspicuous or blatant way; his collection offers us living poetry.
Restaurant
The fish stocks dictate no monkfish
so I choose an ostrich steak instead.
A ladybird saunters right to the tip
of an orange drinking straw.
A mouse shoots under the swing doors
through to the white steaming kitchen.
Eagerly knife and fork lie beside
an ivory-coloured square plate.
Bluebottle covers an unparalleled
course past lamps and tables.
‘Roasted dodo, sir?’ the waiter
asks in surprise. The lobsters in the
aquarium heave a sigh of relief.
My drink is imitating a lime.
Micha Hamel
from Bewegend doel
(translation by Willem Groenewegen)
The poet does that conscientiously and without deploying deregulatory weaponry. The poems are full of contrast and curious twists and turns, but the language and the sentence structures remain on track and are good and easy to follow. Much of the language used in the collection is very familiar to one, there are turns of phrase that we recognize, but the contexts into which they are placed are new. ‘When I am dead, will you then preserve my soul / in a cool and dark place ‘I ask / of the green person sat opposite me / who is sipping a cup of mint tea’? The contrasting atmospheres that Hamel so effectively produces in his poems are always witty, sometimes hilarious but nevertheless not devoid of sadness.
The I-figure presented by the poet wonders (when conversing with a mammoth in the similarly titled poem) how he can extricate himself from the ‘ocean of pointless petty facts and draw up / one truth with which I can change my daughter’s mind?’
Many words are certainly required to express that which, just like feelings and memories ‘each and every one of them gradually force me to speak about the moving target that I am’. It is only in the concurring representation of all those messy thoughts full of hang-ups and stubborn memories, full of secret longings and incorrect self-images, full of the obstacles that family life, for example, has in store for us that the world allows itself to be reined in. Only after Pandora’s Box has been opened does the poet get the chance to place a full stop, invariably in sober fashion: ‘You are surely tired of all that talk. Shall I get something to drink?’
Micha Hamel (1970) is a composer-conductor and poet. He composes orchestral works, songs and chamber music and has also written for dance and theatre. In 2008 his tragic operetta Snow White (the National Travelling Opera) toured the country and was very successful. In June 2012 he was 'composer in focus' at the Holland Festival. He made his debut as a poet in 2004 with Alle enen opgeteld (‘All ones added up’). This collection won the Lucy B. & C.W. van der Hoogt Prize and soon saw two reprints. The collection Luchtwortels (‘Air roots’) appeared in 2006, in 2010 came Nu je het vraagt (‘Now that you ask’), and finally, in 2013, Bewegend doel (‘Moving target’). At the moment he is working on a series of articles about the future of classical music and on a melodrama for the theatrical company Orkater.
Translator: Diane Butterman
Source: from the jury report upon nomination
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