Writers and poets pay tribute to Lieke Marsman

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Dearest Lieke,

We sit together at the dining table, eating snacks and remembering you with our mouths full. The only thing that feels right to us now is to honor your words. That is why we each chose a poem from your oeuvre, which is so dear to us both, that touches us today.

We love you. Kisses until eternity, Hanna Bervoets & Maartje Wortel

***

Because I was a hero (2)

Suddenly I have a clear thought. I want to be the father. I want thebeing a father who has a daughter who addresses me as oh, father.

‘Little daughter,’ I say, ‘never forget that we are all non-existentwere animals, hatched from an egg to convince someone otherwiseprove. They don’t know who they are dealing with? Come on thenwe tell them. I am a dragon. You can be a tiger. If you youIf you throw it up to someone, they might lose you. Hum a song. Iyou think. You may start to think that nothing is familiar to you, even though you know everythinghave memories. Stay in the now. That’s where I am too. Maybe you gothinking that you can’t do anything, but in the end you can do what you wanted, even ifyou decide not to do it, because it’s not possible. Slap your little clawsout. Always make your own plan. Maybe you’re going to think that the newsreadershave it against you. Listen carefully. It’s an important message.Wait for no one. Always sing about rain in the rain. Eat so oftenpossibly things with puff pastry. Buy a skipper’s sweater. Leavethey never tell you to run faster than a tiger. You areso much better than a tiger. Look, in the distance comes your dragon motherflown in, soft potbelly to rest on…’

Out Lieke Marsman: man with hat. poems 2005-2017

***

The first letter (2)

a voice speaks to me and I must decidewhether it is an angelbut how can I be capable of such a thing?

anyone who has fear wants to read about fearin a newly thawed worldundoing a button on her long coat

and then

starting a shop in a new countryopen the shutters there in the morningsee that it is spring

in a waythat you suddenly wonderwhat it is that lets you in

Out Lieke Marsman: man with hat. poems 2005-2017

Ellen Deckwitz

A jury report of life

We could read in all the In Memoriams that Lieke won numerous literary prizes because she was such a damn good writer, poet and philosopher, but not that she was also very good at to live. We generally don’t award prizes for that, because everyone already does that, living. It is basically a matter of being born and continuing to breathe. However, I would still like to write a jury report for the way Lieke performed until her last day, because that is perhaps as inspiring as her poetry.

The jury would like to express its admiration for the fact that Lieke, even after she knew she was seriously ill, was always the funniest person in every company or app group. Lieke’s zest for life was contagious and, where possible, was accompanied by a tendency towards debauchery. The jury also does not want to leave unmentioned the ability to successfully flirt with high fever, proliferating cells and death on the heels.

With their mouths open in amazement, the jury took note of Lieke’s way of dealing with the consequences of illness. When her arm and shoulder were amputated, she not only taught herself to write with her left hand, but also to play tennis. The jury tried to imitate her serve. Place the ball on the racket head, throw it up and then serve it hard from the air into the opponent’s service box. The jury has not yet succeeded in this.

Of course, how Lieke wrote deserves all conceivable prizes, but also how she thought and fearlessly spoke out about injustice and political laziness deserves all the credit. So sharp, so smart, so ruthless for the hypocrites and loving for people who are not powerful.

Her courage should be an example.

The courage to live, to live to the fullest, to love a very small dog with heart and soul, to marry your great love when death has already threatened so much, to laugh disaster in the face by combining heavy pain relief with champagne on your last day in the stands of Roland Garros.

If the jury could, it would have awarded eternal life. Now she hopes for a UFO to a divine afterlife full of love. Godspeed, dear Lieke.

Claudia de Breij

For Lieke

there are different ways you can go and too early is one of themwhen the hall lights come onno one gets upas long as we are worn out in this lightplushies remain in placethere may be more to comesomething we can printagainst shaking chests

We liked to keep you to ourselves for a whilebut today we believe in a parallel universe alive on other planets

Babs Gons

For Lieke

It’s still quite light.There is quite little time left in this lightto start. Very little shapewhere I can say: thank you.For the variations on the variationson a theme and the dayswhere the darkness is indescribableexcept with the word: present.Before the distant whoosh of the German Autobahnin the flooding of a heating pipe.For what still rustles in all its tenderness.For what was lucid.For a merciful little guy.For always descendingin Lower Netherlands.Much earlier: that house party at the Reguliers,you danced.We got more and more wordsto describe sadnessand we lost the poetry,after which we started doing things.Or in Tilburg, later,in that garden. The air still, like air.We stood in time.We were talking about something.It was far from being a poem.And it was much brighter too and there was more beginning.

Maarten van der Graaff

The Shrieking Garden

Lieke Marsman is now in / part of the Shrieking Garden, in that garden it is about a resounding life and resounding decay. Everything is part of it: the language, the writing, the vegetation, the insects, the shapes. For me, Lieke is and has always been there, perhaps before us.

Manon Uphoff

Ode to Lieke Marsman

some women are rare warriorswho fearlessly walk into the eye of the stormat their side a grace that recognizes no time

some become mighty mothers of bearded beingswild flowersof drinking dogs

others are witches who shudder brightly behind curtainsreintroduce in an arena full of menhere failure is not an option

still others were born as magicians in disguisewho fearlessly give every word the scent of vanillawith a flawless tongue against the roof of their mouth

and still others are prophets who speak effusively to deathwhile summers knock on their doorsdarkness on their shoulders whispers

the last kind of women who dream of forbidden postersin rain-drenched alleysface to face with the sublime

a rare species like you Liekewash them all

Nisrine Mbarki Ben Ayad

Lieke

There is a woman who knew the first letter of everything,of fear, of breath, of weight.She knew that a challenged body and an exhausted world have the same roots. She signed the connection. She gave the line a name. We now live in that name.

Life collapsed into bundles, time collapsed into language.Somewhere there are planets that we have not yet nameda handwriting that resembles hers.Everything that was no longer possible has arrived there.

I look for her in the language.

Gershwin Bonevacia