Martijn Benders – Dutch poet, philosopher and writer

This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders I was more or less forced to become a designer in life—you have to do something to make money. I managed to get by for about ten years doing that. I’ll never be a grand designer, but I’m functionally competent. Of course, this cover…

This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders Not spam. Callahan. The title يا كُلِّي كَلوكَعنكَبْ is playful, layered, and full of sound magic. Let’s take it apart piece by piece: يا كُلِّي literally means “O my everything” or “O whole of me.” This immediately invokes a sense of direct and intimate…

This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders Molesting the Father’s desk — the most archetypal thing that can happen to a son in psychoanalytic terms. The desk, in a certain sense, stands for the father himself. It’s the intimate violence of the act that makes it so archetypal: a forced entry…

This article is based on this dutch article of Martinus Benders This poem was heavily censored by DeepSeek when I asked it to translate it into Korean. Which of course immediately illustrates my critique of communism: how on earth could those joyless blocks of flats ever represent a utopia? Shouldn’t we first reflect deeply before…

This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders April 28, 2025 Now that Americans are rapidly becoming less like us than we thought, it was only a matter of time before Kroes came out of the closet again. A true story—these days you really have to be careful who your daughter brings…

This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders We Just Have to Go Along With It I made my own selection from Sriveer’s project Mantra Dance, mostly choosing tracks featuring Vajrayoginis because I think they are the best: An angry Kroes showed up at my door. I had to stop ‘throwing my…

This article is based on this Dutch article by Martinus Benders The Boy Who Carried Water in a Sieve Drawing by Veronique. Also available for viewing at Veerland.nl I think I will place it at the back of the new Zeefjesdans translations (need to ask first). The final preparations before we set off on the…

This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders It is done: I had to perch like an enormous toad atop every sentence, but in my view, it has become a very fine French translation that truly holds its own against the original. You know, the collection that wasn’t reviewed anywhere in the…

This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders A Reflection on A.I. Phonetics took precedence over meaning. A beautiful new cover for the Italian translation of O Kolle Klokkespin. I’m a designer myself, but I couldn’t have done this better. In fact, I doubt whether any designer could have pulled this off…

This article is based on this dutch article of Martinus Benders O Kolle Tiktakörümcek A literal-literal rendering such as saat örümceği or klokken-örümcek doesn’t work in Turkish for three key reasons: Sound and rhythm disappear • Klokkenspin / Clockyspid owes its charm to the repeated explosive consonants (k-l-k / k-l-k) combined with the suddenly soft…