Antwerp will be city poet-free from next Monday. After Ruth Lasters submitted her resignation in September for a poem refused by the municipality, the remaining city poets also announced on Saturday that they would return their assignment. In letters and social media posts, Yannick Dangre, Lotte Dodion, Lies Van Gasse and the duo Prose-K (Yves Kibi Puati Nelen and Cleo Klapholz) criticize the city’s cultural policy — in particular the decision to suspend cultural project subsidies for three years. to make.
After Ruth Lasters stepped down in September, the other city poets consulted with the municipal council about the interpretation of their role. “To see whether the city poet can take the critical space it used to have,” Lotte Dodion told the Flemish broadcaster VRT. “What are the outlines of free speech, how should we proceed?” When these questions were not answered satisfactorily, despite the mediation of the writers’ organization PEN Vlaanderen, the poets collectively decided to pull the plug.
‘pure promo’
It started out so promising. At the beginning of this year, the port city announced that it would appoint not one, but five city poets for the first time, for a period of two years. “To commemorate the formula of poetry in the city,” said the now-criticized alderman for culture, Nabilla Ait Daoud (N-VA), at the time with hope. A little over a year later, the poets conclude that the experiment has not worked, and they argue for “a strong word artist who can save the face of culture in Antwerp”, according to Prose-K.
Ruth Lasters already drew her conclusions in September, when her poem Ransom, about stigmatization in the Flemish education system, was not recognized as an urban poem. Lasters also works as a teacher and realized the day after the refusal that she could not stay on, she recently told NRC. She emailed Ait Daoud: “If the city even refuses an educational poem that addresses the discrimination against thousands of young people, it is crystal clear to me that the city poems only serve as a promotion for the city and not as an expression of culture or literature.”
Also read: For the Antwerp city poet Ruth Lasters, her refused ransom was not just a poem
‘Packed in book boxes’
The other city poets now denounce, each in their own way, the lack of interest and support of the city government. Yannick Dangre writes that it also happened to him “on several occasions that the reading of an ordered city poem was cut out of the ceremonial occasions at the eleventh hour.” According to Lies Van Gasse, poetry is the biggest loser. “The city is in danger of being packed in book boxes,” she writes her website.
Ait Daoud said in radio program The Morning to take note of the announced resignation. According to the driver, not enough time has been taken to reach a “new letter of intent”. The city council has made the decision to cancel culture subsidies “because we are facing a very serious cutback”, according to Ait Daoud.
Next Sunday, the departing city poets will perform in their function for the last time, at the Antwerp literature festival Crossing Border. They then recite their farewell letters, among other things.