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Charlotte Van den Broeck

Chameleon | Nachtroer

Charlotte Van den Broeck

TRANSLATED BY DAVID COLMER

Publication Date : 27 Feb 2020

ISBN: 9781780374475

Pages: 65
Size :216 x 138mm
Rights: World

After first making her mark as a compelling performer, Belgian poet Charlotte Van den Broeck was acclaimed as one of Europe’s most innovative and original new voices in poetry following the publication of her first collection Chameleon in 2015. Her first English translation combines her debut volume with her second book Nachtroer (2017), its untranslatable title the name of all-night shop in Antwerp where she lives.

Chameleon is a set of apparently naïve but knowingly ironic, playful and subversive poems which trace a girl’s search for a woman’s identity, a coming-of-age exploration of body and language drawing on memories, shapes and landscapes. In Nachtroer her poems take a nighttime journey through heartbreak, insomnia and the hectic flow of daily life, driven by a desire for disappearance, displacement and dissolution.

Chameleon ends with taking to the ocean. Nachtroer’s last poem is about building a boat for such a voyage. Chameleon | Nachtroer sets the two books afloat in English.

‘This joint volume translation introduces the young Belgian poet to English-language audiences with the rich tonal and emotional range that the breadth of two collections allow for. Van den Broeck’s poems stretch from playfulness to introspective and melancholy moods, and her uncanny imagination characterises every single one of her poems. Chameleon | Nachtroer marks the development of a strange and distinctive voice, which comes through powerfully in David Colmer’s astute translation.’ – Helena Fornells, Asymptote Journal

‘Reading Charlotte Van den Broeck’s recent Bloodaxe collection makes it clear to the reader exactly why she is acclaimed as one of Europe’s most innovative and original new voices in poetry.’ – Lizzie Husum, DURA (Dundee University Review of the Arts), on Chameleon | Nachtroer

‘This poetry parades like the chameleon in various appearances…in streaming language and unlikely, striking images.’ – Humo, on Chameleon

‘This is carefully accurate poetry, eloquent and adventurous, and truly authentic. That someone’s second book can be so audacious and dauntless is remarkable.’ – VSB poëzieprijs 2018 jury, on Nachtroer

Charlotte Van den Broeck reads from Chameleon | Nachtroer

Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed Charlotte Van den Broeck reading (or speaking) English translations of six of her poems, followed by the original poems in Dutch, at Letterenhuis in Antwerp in December 2018: first ‘Bucharest’ (‘Boekarest’); then ‘Bull's head’ (‘Stierenkop’), drawing on the opening of ‘Specialist Poulterer’ (Speciaalzaak poelier’) for its introduction; followed by ‘Netezon Laundrette’ (‘Wasserette de Netezon’), ‘Groceries Soft Drinks Spirits & Tobacco’ (‘Algemene voeding fris drank sterk drank & tabac’), and ‘Hvannadalshnúkur’. Five of the poems are from Chameleon while ‘Groceries Soft Drinks Spirits & Tobacco’ is from Nachtroer. The English translations used here are by Astrid Alben and Michele Hutchison and were previously published by Versopolis, Poetry International and Banipal.

 

USA: Click here to order from Indiebound or Bookshop.org

 

  

BOOKS BY Charlotte Van den Broeck

The Inside of a Stone

Charlotte Van den Broeck

The Inside of a Stone

Publication Date : 20 Feb 2025

Read More   amazon.co.uk

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Belgian poet Charlotte Van den Broeck's online reading for the National Centre for Writing on 27 May 2020, chaired by Sasha Dugdale, is on YouTube.

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