On October 14, Cornelis van der Wal will perform at one of the events of the Transpoesie Poetry Festival in Brussels. Together with five other poets from all over Europe – Being Bergsson from the Faroe Islands, Kārlis Vērdiņš from Lithuania, Rita Kogan from Israel, Ondřej Macl from the Czech Republic and Radu Bata from Romania – he will take the stage of the Muntpunt library. In addition to reading from their own work, they will also talk about how poetry deals with the subject of Freedom and Identity. The event will be recorded and can be watched back later.
The Transpoesie festival takes place from 23 September to 21 October with various events. The festival is organized to celebrate the European Day of Languages and Language Diversity (September 26). The events consist of lectures and panels that discuss various topics around the theme To be in the (k) now – poetry as a means of social expression. In this way, the festival aims to raise awareness of linguistic diversity within Europe.
Cornelis van der Wal (Leeuwarden, 28 January 1956) is a Frisian writer and poet. He lived in Groningen for 18 years. From 2009 to 2013 he lived in Sneek, but now he lives in Leeuwarden again. He published seven volumes of poetry. With his first volume A Nest of Young Magnets, he won the Fedde Schurer Prize in 1993. Van der Wal was also the webmaster of the literary online magazine Farsk and later of Ensafh. Until June 2011, Van der Wal was also a poetry reviewer for the Friesch Dagblad. In 2019, translations of six of his poems were published in the renowned Danish magazine Hvedekorn.
