Cut up more poems!

'What is poetry?' wordle
by Joan Houlihan

HUMO: In je dichterscollectief verknippen jullie gedichten.

David Van Reybrouck: En waarom niet? Een gedicht is nooit af, 't is open software. Ik geef mijn gedichten vaak door aan vrienden met de vraag: remix dit eens. Soms schrijven we met z'n vijven aan één gedicht, in verschillende talen. En dat marcheert.

--HUMO, interview met David van Reybrouck, 28 december 2010

By now, I guess it is known that I am quite behind with reading magazines from home. From time to time, kind spirits send me some issues by post or bring them to me in person when they are visiting Ghana. At this moment, I am reading a December issue from HUMO and stumbled upon an interview with the Flemish writer David Van Reybrouck.

Taken from Melanie Bates

Apparently I have missed out on many things as I hadn't heard of him yet while he has been winning several literary prices and has published the bestseller "Congo. A History" in 2010.

I enjoyed reading his interview, he seems a very interesting man. This particular quote caught my eye as this is the first time that I see a metaphore with "open source software" used to describe poetry:

A poem is never finished, it is open software. Often I pass my poems to friends with the question: remix this for me. Sometimes we write a poem with five people, in different languages. And it works.

At the same time, reading about poetry in Dutch, I realised that I haven't read any Dutch or Flemish literature since my schooling, shame on me...

So that is now added to my todo-list.