This year the Grand Poetry Prize, the annual award for the best Dutch-language poetry collection, goes to The harmony of the cracks by poet Samuel Vriezen (1973). His “rhythmically compelling, linguistically playful and mathematically structured poetry” received the prize, an amount of 20,000 euros, on Thursday evening during a festive meeting in Rotterdam. The jury, consisting of poets Anne Vegter, Hélène Gelèns and Alara Adilow, called Vriezen’s collection “unique and unrepeatable in its search for a livable world for all creatures.”
Poet and composer Vriezen worked for ten years on the collection, which can indeed be read as a search for “a livable world for all creatures”, as the jury report writes. It is therefore a search for a harmony that has been lost in man’s relationship with the world destroyed by capitalism. Vriezen’s poetry, which is lyrical but also has a deeply intellectual and theoretical character, relies heavily on political philosophy and mathematics.
In the title The harmony of the cracks is a reference to Pythagoras’ idea of ’the harmony of the spheres’, namely that the universe is formed according to balanced, mathematically determined proportions. Vriezen’s ‘cracks’ sow doubt about this, as does the motto with which the collection opens: a quote about the work of Karl Marx. His theory on capitalism and class struggle is, according to that quote, “the only truly relevant contemporary approach to rediscovering harmony within humanity, as well as the harmony between humanity and nature as a whole.” At the same time, it is a misconception of Marxism “that there will ever be a society in which contradictions are resolved.” How then to regain harmony? The harmony of the cracks continues to use mathematics: the stanza structure follows the Fibonacci number series, or the mathematical translation of what is called the golden ratio in art history.
A new, better society
Vriezen’s collection thus provides, as the jury wrote, “a passionate report of danceable thought exercises that ultimately lead to the hopeful suspicion that not everything we have said in a multitude of voices is meaningless, but can be material for a new, better society in which there is no room for systemic violence.”
Vriezen (Groningen, 1973) followed university studies in mathematics and computer science, after which he also completed a conservatory study as a composer. He performs his own compositions as a pianist. He made his debut in 2008 with the poetry collection 4 sentences and also published the book of essays Network in eclipse (2016), which was based on his blog texts about niche literature.
The other nominated collections were Food for highwaymen from Els Moors, Household book of the hidden things by Maarten van der Graaff, Barcode of silence by Hester Knibbe and Time for peace by Charles Ducal. Van der Graaff’s collection received the audience award, which was awarded by listeners of the radio program Opium. Last year the Grand Poetry Prize went to the collection The shame kind by Paul Demets.
