I don’t write a lot of personal posts on this blog, since I try to stick to writing about poetry and MFA programs, but over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been able to get away for a bit and take much needed vacation to Belgium that I wanted to write about — and I promise this does have a connection to my poetry.
You see, Belgium is like a second home to me, but one that I don’t get to see nearly often enough. It’s been a dozen years since I’ve been back, thanks to a number of things that got in the way, including that little pandemic that we’re not 100% over. So it was high time I returned with my family to visit friends and reconnect with some of the places we love most.
I first went to Belgium as an exchange student, and I still am in touch with my host-mother, Jenny, and my host-brother, Frank. I lived there for a year again when I was on Fulbright to Ghent to research my dissertation, the translations of the Collected Poems of Paul Snoek, and again for six months when I taught as a Fulbright professor in Leuven and Antwerp. The last time we were there was with students in a month-long study abroad program that we took to Brussels, where I got to brush up on my French. But this time we returned to Ghent and to Leuven, visited Frank and his wife Sabine, saw their kids Fritz and Tessa, and even met their significant others. It’s amazing that they are both accomplished young adults, and that Frank and I (and our spouses) are now starting to contemplate retirement.
When Tessa was 18, she asked me for a poem for her birthday. That prompted me to write “Tesselations” which will be in my forthcoming book Tree Fall with Birdsong. Other poems, like “The Rain in Flanders” are inspired by my time there while on my first Fulbright, just a year before she was born.
I don’t know if or when I might write more Belgian poems, but I’m always inspired by it and by the work I’ve done translating from Dutch. We were glad to be able to reconnect with Paul, one of Paul Snoek’s sons, again on this trip, too. It’s always great to see him and his partner, Sophie, and to catch up on their lives.
The thing about visiting Belgium is that, even when we do touristy things, like visiting the James Ensor house in Oostende or going to the War Museum in Bastogne, the site of the Battle of the Bulge, it is more like visiting a familiar place or hanging out wiht family than going on a trip. We were happy to take long walks in the countryside or around the city, visiting the universities where I studied or taught. We also stopped by downtown Brussels on the way to Leuven and spent an afternoon at the Royal Art Museum in Antwerp.
Everywhere we went was filled with memories and associations, and we wished we had more time to soak it all in. But vacations can’t last forever, just like the beautiful summer weather we had while we were there. Our first day was cold and rainy, which is typical for Belgium even in summer, but then we got sun and the heat that the Belgians had been craving, since they had had a very rainy spring. But the last few days returned to the normal cool temperatures and drizzle, as a reminder that it was time to head home, which we did with the promise that we won’t let so much time go by before we visit again.
So thanks to everyone we hung out with in Belgium this time, from my host-family Jenny, Frank, Sabine, Fritz, Lore, Tessa, and Bernard, to Paul and Sophie, and even to the staff member of the Irish College in Leuven who took us on an impromptu tour one morning that lasted nearly an hour, the owner and customers at a beer shop where we watched Belgium play in the Euro Cup one night, and the teacher at our son’s school who let us in to see his classroom that had hardly changed in nearly 20 years. It was a magical trip with amazing weather, great food, and wonderful experiences to add to our long list of memories to revisit next time.
Kendall Dunkelberg 