During the BoekenFEST kept small by budget cuts in De Nieuwe Kolk in Assen, there was a lot of music in addition to literature. Tim Knol, Nico Dijkshoorn and Judith Koelemeijer breathed new life into the readers’ party.
“If I read what I have written about Drenthe, I do not know whether I will safely reach my Volvo tonight.” Writer and poet Nico Dijkshoorn says it with a grin, before starting off with a passage about café De Amer in Amen (” home of the nasty meatball”) from his most recent book Almost on the radio . The Drenthe ball is a famous snack among Dutch musicians, but wrongly so, according to the book’s protagonist. “Sometimes I just asked if they were kneaded by hand, to add something to the conversation.”
Relaxed atmosphere
At BoekenFEST, the literary festival in De Nieuwe Kolk (DNK), visitors will not find needlessly complicated analyses, but an accessible programme. Previously with six or seven well-known writers, but this year in a slimmed-down edition with three guests.
At first, the emphasis on music almost makes you forget that it is a literary festival. Dijkshoorn, who also provides the kick-off and afterparty of the festival with his band The Hank Five, seamlessly connects the roles of musician and writer with Almost on the radio. In Dijkshoorn’s novel, about a fictional band that never made it far, the writer says he has unconsciously processed his experiences with The Hank Five. “Without realizing it, I actually wrote a book about my own band.”
Self-confident and free-spirited
With about two hundred visitors, the festival is making a cautious restart after the corona years. “I think the atmosphere is very good, I hear positive sounds,” says Ilona Klopstra of DNK. “Despite the different design, there is something for everyone to do. We hoped that visitors would find us again. Fortunately, that turns out to be the case.”
Thanks to the new structure of BoekenFEST, visitors do not have to choose from the program components. The smaller Van Gorcumzaal is therefore quite full during the lecture by biographer Judith Koelemeijer. She spent seven years on a book about Etty Hillesum, a twenty-something who kept a diary during the early years of the Second World War on the advice of her therapist.
Reading youth
After the presentation by Nico Dijkshoorn, Helma and Tamara Kiewiet, mother and daughter, leave the main hall together. “We don’t just like to read, we devour books,” says Helma. They like to go to events like BoekenFEST together. “It is always great fun here, although I think the visitors are on the old side.” Her daughter Tamara nods. “Perhaps it would be nice to involve young people more in the festival, with a writing competition for example. I think you really need to bring them in.”
Helma wholeheartedly agrees. “I hope that the youth will continue to read,” she says. “A festival like this shows that books don’t have to be boring.”