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…
A Reflection on A.I.
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…
O Kolle Tiktak Spider
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…
A jacket with wings
This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders Wings — the man’s instability is obvious from his publisher’s address. But alright, first spend ten years pretending to be a Nijhoff clone with outdated sonnets, thought Breukers: let’s dominate this scene. As a student of Joosten, he knew exactly what cultural capital valued:…
Divine Elixirs and Heavenly Boys: Art, Myth, and the Mysteries of Ambrosia
### Amanita 18 Perhaps the scholars of old were too enshrined, In titles, rituals, distinctions blind— Unwilling to traverse the deeper thread, Where art breathes life and mystery is fed. Or was it sloth that dulled the scholar’s eye, Too weary for the truths that never lie? * Weedgenstein: Must we reveal what makes the…
The Pastor
The app blinks twice. A silence settles between updates—lingering like steam on commuter glass. I forget my own name at the kiosk, tap “Yes” to terms I haven’t read. Above me, fluorescents flicker as if decoding the soul’s fine print. A child screams in aisle seven: cereal or abandonment—one or the other. Self-checkout beeps like…
*Reception Protocol*
*Reception Code* The fluorescent hum sings falsity above the desk where forms collapse into each other, surnames smudged like the aftertaste of a botched dream. A woman in a yellow coat named Desiree argues with the touchscreen; her index finger grinds into the pixelled precipice that should mean Health or History— in this lobby, difference…
Petals, Psychedelia, and Painted Myths: A Journey Through Flowers, Art, and Mind
### Amanita 17 Red and white anemones in folds of flight Blossom from Zephyr’s gown in morning light, Their petals whisper myths of Venus’s grace, A goddess glimpsed in every painted trace. In ancient tales of beauty born from sea, Anemones marked love’s fragility— Each fragile bloom, a mortal’s fleeting breath Touched by desire, and…
Routine for the Nightshift Heart
**Subroutine for the Nightshift Heart** The thermoplastic beep of the fridge door resembles a hymn I once half-remembered— something about bread, or betrayal. My phone buzzes like a moth caught in airport glass, irrelevant notifications in Esperanto. At work, we laminate empathy, hole-punch days into digestible quadrants: morning is a glitch, lunch is news, afternoon…
Breukers as the Most Prominent Writing God
This article is based on this Dutch article of Martinus Benders April 21, 2025 Read a piece by Breukers in which he casts himself and a popular female author as the unreachable peaks of the literary Olympus, far above the cold grasp of AI. Sure, artificial intelligence may cater to the ‘lesser scribes’, but the…