Wall poems in Leiden

A wall poem in Russian by Alexander Blok

Wall Poems (Dutch: Muurgedichten, alternatively Gedichten op muren or Dicht op de Muur) is a project in which 101 poems in many different languages were painted on the exterior walls of buildings in the city of Leiden, The Netherlands.[1][2][3]

History and description

The Wall Poems project was funded by the private Tegen-Beeld foundation of Ben Walenkamp and Jan-Willem Bruins, the project's two artists, with additional funding from several corporations and the city of Leiden.[2][4] It began in 1992 with a poem in Russian by Marina Tsvetaeva and (temporarily) finished in 2005 with the Spanish poem De Profundis by Federico García Lorca.[4] Other poets included in the set include E. E. Cummings, Langston Hughes, Jan Hanlo, Du Fu, Louis Oliver, Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, William Shakespeare, and W. B. Yeats,[3][5] as well as local writers Piet Paaltjens and J. C. Bloem.[4] One of the more obscure poems in the collection is written in the Buginese language on a canal wall near the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies; it and many of the other poems are accompanied by plaques with translations into Dutch and English.[2]

Guides

A guide available on the web describes a walking tour for visitors to Leiden that takes in 25 of the 101 poems.[6] The first 43 poems have been collected in a book by Marleen van der Weij, Dicht op de muur: gedichten in Leiden, and the rest are described in a second volume, published in 2005.[7]

Influence

The poem Le bateau ivre on a wall in Paris

Based on the success of the Leiden poetry project, wall poems have also been painted in several other Dutch cities.[8][9] In 2004 the Dutch embassy to Bulgaria launched a similar project in Sofia,[10] and in 2012 the Tegen-Beeld foundation collaborated with the International Society of Friends of Rimbaud to paint a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, "Le Bateau ivre", on a government building in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.[11] In 2012 a poem by Marsman was painted on a wall in Berlin.

Publications

See also

References

  1. ↑ Beatley, Timothy (2004), Native to Nowhere: Sustaining Home And Community In A Global Age, Island Press, pp. 193–194, ISBN 9781559634533.
  2. 1 2 3 Khouw, Ida Indawati (July 15, 2001), "Leiden, the Dutch city of poems", Jakarta Post.
  3. 1 2 Fihn, Stephan (2005), "Poetry on the Wall", in Garg, Anu, Another Word A Day: An All-new Romp through Some of the Most Unusual and Intriguing Words In English, John Wiley & Sons, p. 59, ISBN 9780471718451.
  4. 1 2 3 The Wall Poems of Leiden, retrieved 2012-06-04.
  5. ↑ Crerand, Patrick J. (2008), The Land of Good Deeds, Ph.D. thesis, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, p. 5.
  6. ↑ Wandeling langs de Muurgedichten van Leiden (in Dutch), retrieved 2012-06-04.
  7. ↑ Dienst Bouwen en Wonen, Leiden, 1996, reprinted 2000 and 2005 by Burgersdijk & Niermans, Leiden; see worldcat. A second volume, published in 2005, (Dicht op de muur 2) describes the poems 44-101.
  8. ↑ "Gedichten op murenroute Veenendaal van start", VeenendalseKrant (in Dutch), December 14, 2009.
  9. ↑ Wall-to-Wall Poetry in A&W, Archipel Willemspark, retrieved 2012-06-04.
  10. ↑ Dikov, Ivan (January 27, 2010), Wall-to-Wall Poetry: How the Dutch Bring European 'Unity in Diversity' to Sofia, Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency).
  11. ↑ Le bateau ivre bien ancré dans le 6e (in French), City Hall of the 6th arrondissement, retrieved 2012-06-04.
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