A Total Eclipse of the Heart. About Dirk van Bastelaere

It is one of the pillars of Dirk van Bastelaere's poetry that a poem is never self-evident. The problem this poet is struggling with is poetry itself. He is trying to keep contemporary poetry alive by thinking it through thoroughly to the end. One of the (perhaps unintentional) consequences of this radical stance is that Van Bastelaere's poetry is heroic. The end is always looming, the apocalypse constantly about to boil over. But not quite… (with an extract and three poems by Dirk van Bastelaere)