Wall Poems

Posted byKendall DunkelbergPosted inWritingTags:, , , , ,

Leave it to the Dutch to create neat graffiti. In Leiden, they have printed poems on walls in beautiful fonts, like this poem by Paul Snoek, “Een zwemmer is een ruiter,” which appears on the wall of the public pool, De Zijl. It has apparently been there since 2003. Now there is a website that catalogs the wall poems, which were inscribed between 1992 and 2005, and which I stumbled upon this evening while trying out Google’s Webmaster Tools and then searching for links to this blog. I didn’t actually find a link to this blog that time, but did find a blog that referenced the poem and my translation of it (posted on the website) from Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus, published by Green Integer Press in 2000. Most of the website is in Dutch, but most of the poems seem to have translations in English and other languages. If you’re interested in seeing pictures of a Dutch city or seeing the way these poems have been printed on buildings or in interior spaces, check it out.

Published by Kendall Dunkelberg

I am a poet, translator, and professor of literature and creative writing at Mississippi University for Women, where I direct the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing, the undergraduate concentration in creative writing, and the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium. I am Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, and I have published four collections of poetry, Tree Fall with Birdsong, Barrier Island Suite, Time Capsules, and Landscapes and Architectures, as well as a collection of translations of the Belgian poet Paul Snoek, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus, and the textbook A Writer's Craft: Multi-Genre Creative Writing. I was born and raised in Osage, Iowa, and have lived for over thirty years in Columbus, Mississippi, where my wife Kim and I let wildflowers grow in our yard to the delight of spring polinators and only some of our neighbors.

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