Astrid Haerens
- Belgium -
Astrid Haerens (1989) lives and works in Brussels. She holds a Master's degree in Word Art at the Antwerp Conservatory. She writes prose, poetry and non-fiction and teaches poetry analysis at the Antwerp Conservatory. She is fascinated by poetry performances and intermedial work. In 2017 she made her prose debute with Stadspanters[Urban Leopards] an intense, almost liquid portrait of twenty-somethings struggling with their identity in Brussels. For her second poetry project, Iedereen Dichter, [Everyone’s a Poet] Haerens left the metropolis of Brussels and moved to the rural area of the Westhoek. In March 2022 her debut collection, Oerhert [Irish elk] came out. The essay ‘De lach van de Medusa’ [‘The smile of the Medusa’] (1975) by the French feminist writer and philosopher Hélène Cixous formed the point of departure. She is now writing her second novel.
Astrid Haerens has published prose and poetry in various literary magazines such as Revisor, De Gids, Het liegend konijn, Poëziekrant, DW B, G., Deus ex Machina, Hard//Hoofd, Kluger Hans, Meander, etc. Since July 2022 she is the fourth city poet of Kortrijk (2022-2024).
Poetry as ‘écriture feminine’
Astrid Haerens (1989) lives and works in Brussels. It is also in Brussels that she first ventured forth with her poetry. Or is it rather the poetry of the city that stole into her? For her project Stadsklanken [Sounds of the City], Astrid Haerens camped out for a month in a small caravan in various locations in the Brussels district of Ixelles. She asked questions, listened, looked, organised poetry workshops and poetic interventions and spoke to dozens of passers-by and locals in six different places. Based on all the stories, sounds and rhythms, she tried to capture the heartbeat of Ixelles and its inhabitants in poems. Astrid Haerens incorporated the results of her quest into a digital map that you can follow with a smartphone or tablet in your hand at https://www.stadsklanken.be/ Through the poems read, short podcasts and videos, you acquaint yourself with the most poetic aspect of the metropolis.
For her second poetry project, Iedereen Dichter, [Everyone’s a Poet] (http://www.iedereendichter.astridhaerens.be/) Haerens left the metropolis of Brussels and moved to the rural area of the Westhoek. For two months she stayed in various villages and towns in the region and spoke to more than 200 people ranging from postmen to mayors, from artists to farmers. She translated those encounters into poetry and images. As with the Stadsklanken project, a digital poetic map of the region came into being. Together with videographer Leonardo Van Dijl she made a short film along with the project and a book was also published.
Through the essay ‘De lach van de Medusa’ [‘The smile of the Medusa’] (1975) by the French feminist writer and philosopher Hélène Cixous, she came across l’écriture féminine, an ‘other’, female writing. The essay formed the point of departure for her debut collection Oerhert [Primal Deer] (Atlas Contact), which was published in 2022 and which focuses on being a woman. The essay profoundly influenced her way of dealing with poetry. She wanted to get away from an abstract way of looking at the world that dominates contemporary poetry in our language area. She herself says about this in an interview with the digital medium Bruzz: “That conquest of language has prompted me to step away from the prevailing ideas about what poetry ought to be: abstract, intertextual, intellectual. Abstraction is a luxury. Talking about feminism or sexual violence starts from deep emotion, from trauma. I didn’t wish to nor could I approach that cerebrally. Embodied writing, coming from the body’s memory, offered a chance to rediscover language. The body keeps the score, I am convinced of that. You may possibly just get just closer to the source than by following the stories you make up in your head.”
Haerens’ poetry is also nourished by the social attention that is paid today to the relationship between men and women and the power structures and the abuse that goes with it. Poetry is her way of resisting, but also of showing her own vulnerability, a vulnerability that Haerens believes should have a place in our society. On the Bruzz site, she puts it this way: “It’s that very great anger within me that gives me the energy to shove my anxiety aside and to say: ‘Fuck off, I’m going to do it anyway!’ Despite the forces in society that still seek to impose silence on women, that want to keep them small, caring and subservient, to ridicule, to objectify ... Despite those powers that say: ‘It would be better if you didn’t stand out too much. Are you actually smart or talented enough?’ I stand up and speak. This collection is my resistance, my rebellion. If I then come to grief, then so be it.”
The city which was the subject of her first poetry project is also central to her debut novel Stadspanters, [Urban Leopards] which was published in 2017. Astrid Haerens has also published prose and poetry in literary magazines such as Revisor, De Gids, Het liegend konijn, Poëziekrant, DW B, G., Deus ex Machina, Hard//Hoofd, Kluger Hans, Meander, etc.
Since July 2022 she is the fourth city poet of Kortrijk (2022-2024), a city in the south of the province West-Flanders. She was born in the city and grew up in the region. Astrid introduces herself as a city poety – in Kortrijk they call it ‘Letterzetter’ [typesetter] – with the slogan 'A revolution rustles between the lines' in a small video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wzJz4z_LYM
https://letterzetterkortrijk.be/
Poetry
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RISE / OPKOMST
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Anger’s family tree / De stamboom van een boosheid
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