January 7, 2009
Welcome to the January 2009 PIW Netherlands issue, featuring Maria van Daalen, in whose work the magical and spiritual are intertwined with tangible reality. Alongside a selection of her poems, we publish ‘She also used that drain', a review of van Daalen’s The Law of Conservation of Energy which first appeared in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Click on the green link below to visit Maria van Daalen’s poet page.
Recently added poets
|
January 1, 2009
Maria van Daalen made her début as a poet in 1989 with Raveslag (The Beat of the Raven’s Wing), which was shortlisted for the prestigious C. Buddingh’ Prize in 1990. Six more volumes of poetry and a collection of short stories and essays followed. Besides being a poet, Van Daalen is one of the very few experts on Vodou in the Netherlands and she is currently working on a ‘grand essay’ about Haitian Vodou, Le Miroir des Mystères / Spiegel van Mysteriën (Mirror of Mysteries), to be published in 2009. In August 2007, Van Daalen was the first Dutch person to be officially initiated as a Mambo Asogwe (the highest rank of priestess in the tradition of Haitian Vodou) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Since then, she has been an adviser to the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam, for an exhibition of Vodou art objects, entitled Vodou / Art & Mysticism from Haiti (November 2008–May 2009). |