Wall poems in Leiden

Last updated
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 Tegen-Beeld website provides a map of all of the poems, with photographs of them on location, transcripts, translations and additional information. [8] The website also supplies audio recordings of some of the poems.

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. [9]

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. [10] [11] In 2004 the Dutch embassy to Bulgaria launched a similar project in Sofia, [12] 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. [13] In 2012 a poem by Marsman was painted on a wall in Berlin.

Physicists Sense Jan van der Molen and Ivo van Vulpen were inspired by the poetry project to start the Leiden Wall Formulas project (Leidse Muurformules). [14] They selected famous formulas to paint on walls in Leiden, to celebrate the city's history of contributions to physics. Tegen-Beeld, the creators of the original poetry project, supported them by designing and painting the illustrations to accompany the formulas. This, in turn, inspired similar projects in other Dutch cities, including Utrecht. [15]

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. ↑ Tegen-Beeld, Stichting. "Muurgedichten | Ontdek de muurgedichten in Leiden". tegen-beeld.nl (in Dutch). Retrieved 2025-11-12.
  9. ↑ 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.
  10. ↑ "Gedichten op murenroute Veenendaal van start", VeenendalseKrant (in Dutch), December 14, 2009[ permanent dead link ].
  11. ↑ Wall-to-Wall Poetry in A&W, Archipel Willemspark, archived from the original on 2012-10-25, retrieved 2012-06-04.
  12. ↑ 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.
  13. ↑ Le bateau ivre bien ancré dans le 6e (in French), City Hall of the 6th arrondissement, retrieved 2012-06-04[ permanent dead link ].
  14. ↑ "Leidse Muurformules". www.muurformules.nl. Retrieved 2025-11-12.
  15. ↑ "Utrechtse muurformules | Universiteit Utrecht". Utrechtse muurformules (in Dutch). Retrieved 2025-11-12.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.