Poem
Instructions
Step 1: Count how many steps in the Oudebildtdijk
Step 2: Look for the light switch that turns on the view
Step 3: Never ask how old a dike is
there’ll be more noughts than you thought and maybe
they’re softer with question marks
Step 4: Celebrate the wind
always, in whatever form it might come
(strong, gentle, decisive, capricious)
Step 5: Promise to not take any more photos with your phone
from now on just with your eyes
(and preferably of things nobody else sees)
Step 6: Lay your thoughts along the dike like a tape measure
Step 7: Add question marks to all the sentences
you have spoken in public spaces in the last two years
Step 8: Step over your ego or act like you are a potato
Step 9: Build a house that is made up of different layers
(like a piñata cake)
Step 10: Count down, hide between the gold of the corncobs
(if they’re tall and ready to harvest)
optional: count the heads sticking up
Step 11: Skip, don’t bottle up your feelings but
don’t make them bigger than they are either
Step 12: Think of a word that rhymes with ‘twelfth’
search for it, don’t find it
Sannemaj Betten
(translation: David Colmer)
About the bench
Machiel Braaksma: “Here, we look out over ‘the longest street in the Netherlands’: 12 kilometres long. That is a special fact. Designing a bench based on the length of the dike seemed really cool to me. I wanted to ‘collect’ that entire distance by dividing the 12 kilometres into 12 slats and ‘compressing’ the dike using the bench. Something like folding and unfolding a map, or a ruler, but now using horizontal slats that you can ‘read’ from top to bottom. This place almost automatically unfolds a story in images, thoughts and experiences. It is wonderful what Gerard de Jong – the translator of the poem in Bildts – remarked so beautifully earlier: ‘with a concrete carpet’. I think it is completely Bildts, because it is literally straightforward. Sannemaj Betten has written a beautiful poem for this bench and place: inventive, exciting and intriguing. For every kilometer, every step, she wrote a brilliant interpretation. The poem seems to be a kind of ‘guide’ for the environment and your mindset, which challenges your senses, feelings and way of thinking. The bench is an extension of that in the form of resolute visual poetry.”
About the makers
Poet | Sannemaj Betten (they/them, 29 years old) is a spoken word artist and theatre maker. They grew up in Sint Jacobiparochie, Friesland. In their work, Sannemaj is looking for the things you’d rather leave alone. They then show them as they are: raw, pure and bitter (a little like how chocolate sometimes tastes). They also think it is important to invite people to tell their own story, to search for their own voice. Since the age of 16, Sannemaj has performed on various (literary) stages throughout the Netherlands (Oerol theatre festival, Wintertuin literary festival, festival Explore the North, National Poetry Slam).
Visual artist | With a lightly Dadaist slant, Machiel Braaksma takes objects out of daily life, with which he creates new images and situations which are funny, moving or confusing and nuance or comment on life. He chooses things from everyday life, reassembles them and creates new pieces. Braaksma says about his work: ‘I put everything in the wrong order in the ‘right’ way. “What I want from my work is that it’s original, unmistakable and that it has longevity. I’m looking for resilient, sturdy objects that can unashamedly be themselves yet engaging. Images with an exuberant integrity and a shameless, inner beauty.”
With thanks to
Provincie Fryslân, Gemeente Waadhoeke, Walter Baas, Duropanel Eindhoven, Stedon Leeuwarden
Picture: Hoge Noorden | Jacob van Essen