The main speaker of the annual Slauerhoff Lecture in Cultuurpodium Dorpskerk Huizum is Abdelkader Benali, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent writers for thirty years.
After the break, spoken word performer Peter Vermaat tells Slauerhoff’s life story in one coherent poetic reading on the basis of his poems. Theatre maker Vermaat can recite Slauerhoff’s poems appealingly and from memory.
This year is the 90th anniversary of Slauerhoff’s death. The evening is organized in collaboration with the Jan Slauerhoff Commemoration Foundation. The chairman of this foundation, Evert Duintjer Tebbens, will briefly reflect on this.
From his country of birth, Morocco, Benali wrote last summer that he regularly walked past Slauerhoff’s house in Tangier. Strangely enough, Slauerhoff felt closer to Benali there than in the Netherlands. Benali: ‘Feeling closer: isn’t that all we’re looking for? Closer to Tangier, closer to Friesland that I know from the mounds, the lakes and the formidable view over the water, everything always that water.’ He wants to speak in the village church Huizum about the Sea and the Lake, that which brings us together. And how he crossed Slauerhoff’s path through fate in life. His lecture is a travelogue, in which worlds are visited, an ode to the restless traveler who writes postcards in his head. With his lecture, Benali is probably writing a new piece of literary history.
Benali’s breakthrough came in 1996 with his much-translated masterpiece Wedding By the Sea. Of his approximately 60 publications, De langverwachte (The Long-awaited) (winner of the Libris Literature Prize 2003), De stem van mijn moeder (My mother’s voice), Bad Boy, De weekendmiljonair (The Weekend Millionaire) and Casa Benali also reached a large readership.
Registration:
The entrance fee is € 7.00. Entrance tickets can be reserved in advance through the Ticket Office.
There is little parking space near the church. Visitors can park – a short walk away and free of charge – in the car park opposite Intratuin (south side of Tijnjedijk).
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