‘Poets of the Anthropocene’

With: Geert Buelens, Dominique De Groen, Lisa Robertson, Pieter Van de Walle & Miek Zwamborn

Artists have always found inspiration in nature, so what does writing in a time of loss and destruction look like? An angry shout, or an elegy? Is there room for poetry in a biosphere dominated by humans and their machines?
Klimaatdichters is a fast-growing organization of Belgian and Dutch poets fighting climate change with poetry, and finding new ways of talking and writing about nature. Together with Bozar, Klimaatdichters invites four “poets of the Anthropocene” onto the stage to read from their own work and talk about the intersection of nature and writing.

Geert Buelens is a writer, essayist and lecturer in Modern Dutch Literature at Utrecht University. His most recent book, Wat we toen al wisten, is about the forgotten environmentalist movement of the 1970s and won the Boon Literatuurprijs.

Dominique De Groen is a Belgian poet whose work revolves around fast fashion, internet culture, feminism, climate and (anti-)globalism. Her most recent work, Slangen (2022), won the Jan Campertprijs. 

Lisa Robertson is a Canadian experimental writer. She explores literary forms such as the pastoral, epic, and weather forecast. Robertson won the inaugural C.D. Wright Award for Poetry. In her long-awaited debut novel, The Baudelaire Fractal (2020), a poet realizes she's written the works of Baudelaire.​​​​​​​

Miek Zwamborn is an author, translator and artist, living on the isle of Mull, where she offers a place for art, literature, science and environmentalism to meet through her project Knockvologan Studies. Her most recent book is Onderling (2023), a collection of essays, poems, letters and drawings.

Moderated by Pieter Van de Walle, member of Klimaatdichters and biologist.

The talk will take place in English. The poems are read in the original language (N-E) with translations into English, Dutch and French.