Arjen Duinker

Arjen Duinker (1956) studied psychology and philosophy. He has published one novel, Het moeras (The Morass, 1992), and eleven volumes of poetry. He made his debut as a poet in 1988 with the volume Rode oever (Red Shore). This was followed by such volumes as Losse gedichten (Loose Poems, 1990), De gevelreiniger en anderen (The Sandblaster and Others, 1994), Het uur van de droom (The Dreaming Hour, 1996) and Ook al is het niet zo (Even If It Isn’t So, 1998). In 2001 Duinker received the Jan Campert Prize for his volume De geschiedenis van een opsomming (The History of an Enumeration, 2000). Misschien vier vergelijkingen (Four Equations Perhaps, 2002) was nominated for the VSB Poetry Prize 2003, while De zon en de wereld (The Sun and the World, 2004) won that same prize in 2005 and has been published in English translation in Australia. Further book-length collections have appeared in France, Portugal, Italy, Iran, Russia and the UK, and are in preparation in China, Finland, Croatia and Mexico. One of Duinker’s poems was translated into 220 different languages for a project called ‘World Poem’. Together with the French poet Karine Martel he has written And That ? Infinite (En dat ? Oneindig / Et cela ? L’infini), which was published in Dutch in 2006 and will also appear in French and English. In 2007 Duinker published Quartet for Two Voices: Starfish, Zeester, Etoile de mer, Estrella de mar (four different poems in four different languages).