This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders
At the start of this century, when I first laid eyes on the poem *Tot Besluit* by Menno Wigman, I thought, hey, isn’t that a poem by Roethke?
*I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paperweight.*
— Roethke, Dolor
He had merely swapped the pens for copyettes. It was the poem that made Wigman famous, and I heard no one mention Roethke. Initially, I assumed that Wigman would have noted that this was a pastiche of Roethke. Nope, not at all.
I had to buy his collection *Dit is mijn dag* to see it for myself: there wasn’t a single reference to Roethke. This seemed rather odd. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it plagiarism—the poem deviates too much from Roethke’s work to justify using such a term—but still, I found the situation strange. Especially for someone who had already been accused of having a “borrowed voice.” When one crafts a pastiche of someone else’s work, it is customary to mention the source.
In an interview, Wigman vaguely refers to making use of other literary works, but fails to name Roethke. As to why this is, I’m left in the dark.
Of course, the Netherlands has a longstanding tradition of borrowing, particularly in music. Almost every Dutch hit, when analyzed, seems to hail from countries where copyright laws are more loosely enforced. But Roethke? He’s too well-known. Or is he not, at least in this country?
**The Carp Simulator**
I could see Huub Beurskens’ argument coming from a mile away: if all else fails, he’ll start talking about *quality*. The structure may have been corrupt, but we certainly chose for *quality* when awarding the collection with the passive-aggressive title *The Carp Simulator*. Carps are known to be dull fish, and if you also start simulating them—and even title your collection after that—this reveals exactly what you truly think about the art of poetry. The pseudo-appropriation above, but in a more stupified form.
And that’s exactly what you’ll encounter. The collection includes a whopping 33 very short poems. When offering up so few poems, you’d better ensure each one is truly excellent.
Allow me to post a few examples to illustrate:
[captioned image]
This is already 10% of the entire collection. Who considers this top-tier poetry? Absolutely no one. It’s a kind of lukewarm stand-up comedy, and not even funny. Even as stand-up, it would be woefully bad. Menkveld seems to have confused the genre of poetry with a rough draft of a sitcom dialogue that didn’t make it past the first round of cuts.
**New Knees.** Perhaps Menkveld himself needed new knees to set him on the path to a better life. It can’t be easy, surviving in a literary breeding ground where you must constantly cater to commercial interests to literature at large—where does spoken word come from? Not from America—no way. Erik Menkveld invented it.
No, Beurskens, spare me with your ‘quality’! Sitting to your left was someone programmed at the festival thanks to Menkveld, and to your right was someone who got a shot as a poet at De Bezige Bij, again thanks to Menkveld.
If this is the best De Bezige Bij has to offer, we can conclude that we ought to drain the talent pool rather than refill it.
So, that was kind of the context of my 2006 review. Menkveld took a different tack, and the Van Oorschot publishing house organized a review competition. [I wrote this review](https://martijnbenders.substack.com/p/de-recensie-van-erik-menkveld) about it.
What surprised me most: when I arrived at Poetry International in 2009 around 4pm, straight from a dingy hotel on the Amsterdam Wallen, there was a meeting underway in which Menkveld played a rather domineering role. This was somewhat strange, because the man was merely the presenter that evening (Why him anyway? He’d never presented anything before or after), and he hadn’t worked at Poetry since 2002. So, why did he have such a commanding presence in that meeting? Presenters don’t normally do that, right?
I was too exhausted at the time to investigate further. However, now I approach that memory, somewhere between a heron documentary and a Cuban cigar bar, affected by the part that went black the first time. Erik Menkveld read aloud from my collection, the poem *How God Smells*. Why that poem? It’s quite a good poem, but certainly not the best in the collection. It *is*, however, the poem that most resembles the stand-up comedy Menkveld seemed to enjoy so much. After reading the poem, Bart and I went on stage and delivered *Reading is Reading*. Afterward, Menkveld had to hand me a bouquet of flowers, which he presented by hitting me with the flowers—his idea of a joke. There was an eerie silence, maybe because no one could make sense of the spectacle.
But the “hitting me with the flowers” bit didn’t really land either. I believe Wim Brands, appearing somewhat red-faced, took the stage after this.
All of this aligns with Hakim Bey’s notion of a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). Doing this during an awards ceremony is an entirely new concept. Events of this nature are tightly scripted: everything is predetermined, and the Status Quo reigns supreme from start to finish.
I symbolically handed my scattered flowers to Ester Naomi Perquin (Van Oorschot publishing house), who had been watching from the hallway. She refused to accept them, so I gave them to Alexandra.
Afterward, we wandered through Rotterdam.
That was the backstory to the first TAZ shaped within Dutch poetry. The second TAZ occurred during the Turing National Poetry Contest when I appeared at the ceremony as BERT. Both events were highly successful TAZs. You can read more about the Temporary Autonomous Zone in Hakim Bey’s work, for instance here:
https://archive.org/details/T.A.Z.TheTemporaryAutonomousZoneOntologicalAnarchyPoeticTerrorism
Oh, and look who’s here:
[captioned image]
There’s Mr. van Deel, the “famed” Trouw reviewer, though this proclamation about his distinguished poetic insights isn’t traceable in the paper. However, I did find this odd passage from Onno Blom (De Bezige Bij):
*Despite still having affection for ‘De Bij’, Menkveld became disillusioned with the increasing commercialization of the literary publishing world: “I began to view books in a way that did not satisfy me. It became increasingly important that the authors in your collection achieve success. Editors are more and more required to prioritize potential sales over literary quality.”*
I acknowledge this statement, Mr. Blom!
Martinus Benders
