Poems by Erik Lindner
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Light-lines on the horizon pull the sea into the sky light-lines in the sea the sun lies in the bowl of the clouds which take away its shape horses walk in file along the sand poles down the beach and into the sea, each topped with a bird a ship in the white of its foam brightness stippling my eyelid cargo ships pushing the water out of their way sandbanks in the bay waves washing past them onto the shore crickets in the marram grass footprints whose heels crack open the hard crust of sand sand with just a few shells patches melding together across the sea. (translated from Dutch by Francis R. Jones) * In the storm that just blew upthe road will soon be impassable barriers go up after us foglamps dim ahead of us a little attic window on the left level with the dyke the figure sitting there taps the table with a thimble the child turns over in its sleep the TV’s playing without a sound the corner of the fire escape in the window behind them she puts the newspaper in the basket props her hands against the chair-back counts the tiles as far as the mat the cork strip along the doorjamb sings beneath her breath her fall is a hole in the snow (translated from Dutch by Francis R. Jones) |
Erik Lindner (b. 1968, The Hague) is a poet. He works for the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, The Netherlands. In 1996, he debuted with Tramontane. Over the years he has published six volumes of poetry and his work has seen release in French, German and Italian translations. Fall of 2021 will see his first selected collection in English translation (by Francis R. Jones), published at Vehicule Press in Montreal, Canada. His first novel (Naar Whitebridge) came out in 2013 and the second is due this spring. His German collection Nach Akedia (Matthes & Seitz Verlag, Berlin) was a recommendation by the German Academy.
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