Wall poems in Leiden

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Wall Poems
Muurgedichten, Gedichten op muren
BlokLeiden2.JPG
A 1912 wall poem in Russian by Alexander Blok. "Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека," (translation: "The night. The street. Street-lamp. Drugstore,"). Leiden, corner of Roodenburgerstraat and Thorbeckestraat, 2013
Artist
  • Ben Walenkamp
  • Jan Willem Bruins
Year1992 (1992)
Movement Street art
Subject Poetry
Location Leiden, The Netherlands
Followed byWall physics formulas in Leiden [1]

Wall Poems (Dutch : Muurgedichten, alternatively Gedichten op muren or Dicht op de Muur) is a project in which more than 110 poems in many different languages were painted on the exterior walls of buildings in the city of Leiden, The Netherlands. [2] [3] [4]

Contents

History and description

The Wall Poems project was partly funded by the private Tegen-Beeld foundation of Ben Walenkamp and Jan Willem Bruins, the project's two artists, with additional funding from several corporations and the city of Leiden. [3] [5] It began in 1992 with a poem in Russian by Marina Tsvetaeva and (temporarily) finished in 2005 with the Spanish poem De Profundis by Federico García Lorca. [5] Other poets included in the set include E. E. Cummings, Langston Hughes, Jan Hanlo, Du Fu, Louis Oliver, Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, William Shakespeare, and W. B. Yeats, [4] [6] as well as local writers Piet Paaltjens and J. C. Bloem. [5] One of the more obscure poems in the collection is written in the Buginese language on a canal wall near the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies; it and many of the other poems are accompanied by plaques with translations into Dutch and English. [3]

Guides

A guide available on the web describes a walking tour for visitors to Leiden that takes in 25 of the 101 poems. [7] The first 43 poems have been collected in a book by Marleen van der Weij, Dicht op de muur: gedichten in Leiden, and the rest are described in a second volume, published in 2005. [8]

Influence

The poem Le bateau ivre on a wall in Paris P1110482 Paris VI rue Ferou le bateau ivre rwk.JPG
The poem Le bateau ivre on a wall in Paris

Based on the success of the Leiden poetry project, wall poems have also been painted in several other Dutch cities. [9] [10] In 2004 the Dutch embassy to Bulgaria launched a similar project in Sofia, [11] and in 2012 the Tegen-Beeld foundation collaborated with the International Society of Friends of Rimbaud to paint a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, "Le Bateau ivre", on a government building in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. [12] In 2012 a poem by Marsman was painted on a wall in Berlin.

Publications

See also

References

  1. ↑ de Groot, Michiel (26 April 2021). "The painter of the formulas on the walls: Jan Willem Bruins (1946 - 2021)". Leiden Science Magazine.
  2. ↑ Beatley, Timothy (2004), Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home And Community In A Global Age, Island Press, pp. 193–194, ISBN   9781559634533, archived from the original on 2014-01-01, retrieved 2019-01-14.
  3. 1 2 3 Khouw, Ida Indawati (July 15, 2001), "Leiden, the Dutch city of poems", Jakarta Post , archived from the original on March 4, 2016.
  4. 1 2 Fihn, Stephan (2005), "Poetry on the Wall", in Garg, Anu (ed.), Another Word A Day: An All-new Romp through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words In English, John Wiley & Sons, p. 59, ISBN   9780471718451 .
  5. 1 2 3 The Wall Poems of Leiden, archived from the original on 2012-07-03, retrieved 2012-06-04.
  6. ↑ Crerand, Patrick J. (2008), The Land of Good Deeds, Ph.D. thesis, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, p. 5, ISBN   9780549627180 .
  7. ↑ Wandeling langs de Muurgedichten van Leiden (in Dutch), archived from the original on 2012-01-25, retrieved 2012-06-04.
  8. ↑ Dienst Bouwen en Wonen, Leiden, 1996, reprinted 2000 and 2005 by Burgersdijk & Niermans, Leiden; see worldcat. A second volume, published in 2005, (Dicht op de muur 2) describes the poems 44-101.
  9. ↑ "Gedichten op murenroute Veenendaal van start", VeenendalseKrant (in Dutch), December 14, 2009.
  10. ↑ Wall-to-Wall Poetry in A&W, Archipel Willemspark, archived from the original on 2012-10-25, retrieved 2012-06-04.
  11. ↑ Dikov, Ivan (January 27, 2010), Wall-to-Wall Poetry: How the Dutch Bring European 'Unity in Diversity' to Sofia, Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency), archived from the original on 2011-09-20, retrieved 2012-06-04.
  12. ↑ Le bateau ivre bien ancré dans le 6e (in French), City Hall of the 6th arrondissement, retrieved 2012-06-04[ permanent dead link ].
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