Yentl van Stokkum

- The Netherlands -

Yentl van Stokkum (1991) is a poet, playwright, and performer. After studying Writing for Performance, she was selected for several talent development programs, including the Slow Writing Lab and Wintertuin. She has written for, among others, HNTJong and Silke van Kamp, with whom she was nominated for the BNG Bank Theater Prize for the play Chimo zei Lila. As a poet, she has performed at various festivals such as Lowlands, Poetry International, Dichters in de Prinsentuin, Oerol, and De Nacht van de Poëzie. Her poetry debut Ik zeg Emily was published by Hollands Diep in 2021 and earned her the C.C.S. Crone Stipendium.

 

Yentl is part of the editorial team of the literary magazine De Revisor and, together with Joost Oomen and Stefanie Liebreks, curates the popular Instagram account @poëzieiseendaad. Their jointly compiled anthology Voor alle dagen was published by Uitgeverij Podium. Her second poetry collection Winterbloeiers was released in 2023 and was nominated for the J.C. Bloem Poetry Prize 2025.

 

 


The Whole Bewitching Thing

on the work of Yentl van Stokkum

Author: Iduna Paalman

 

That the words “bewitching” and “butterfly-like” immediately spring to mind when reading the poetry of Yentl van Stokkum (1991) requires no explanation. Read half a poem by Van Stokkum and you’ll know what I mean. Still, let me offer a little explanation for those who have yet to be given the pleasure of discovering her work. Because by “butterfly-like” I do not mean “frivolous” at all, and “bewitching” does not mean “dark” – Van Stokkum does something magical in her poetry; she gives you light and darkness at the same time. For instance, in her poem ik neem deze geliefde op mij als een taak (“i take this lover upon me like a task”) from her collection Ik zeg Emily (“I Say Emily”), the opening stanza alone contains night, clay, and mud as well as euphoria and rebirth:

 


what a night what a night what a night
i pulled myself out of the earth dense lumps of clay mud euphoria
i still have to find my balance give me a second please
it will not take long before i am reborn
at this point everything is sensational to me

 


Van Stokkum’s work cannot be separated from her performance – which is equally bewitching and butterfly-like. When she reads her poetry aloud, she mesmerizes her listeners with a low, sing-song voice, a touch of irony, a mysterious smile. Her poems are experiences: a clear tone draws the listener in, and once you’re in, you remain on the edge of your seat.

 

Let’s zoom in on her debut, the expansive Ik zeg Emily. In this collection, a poet visits the grave of Emily Brontë, the 19th-century writer, and becomes obsessed, possessed. What boundary remains between the poet and the writer of old, which rituals and exorcisms are blurring the lines? “I carved her name into the headboard of every bed I’ve slept in,” writes Van Stokkum, possibly alluding to the myth that Emily carved her initials into a tabletop, “the headboard of every bed in which I had sex / every bed in which I was born.” At another moment she writes from the perspective of Brontë herself:

 


I am required reading in English class
set up schools nobody attends
they will endure
my thoughts form a roof
to take shelter under

 

 

This is characteristic of Van Stokkum’s poetry – she seeks shelter in the riddles and mysteries of a genius who died young, and at the same time offers that very shelter within her own poems.

 

Her second collection Winterbloeiers (“Winter-blooming”) is just as sultry and mysterious. It depicts a sweltering summer that has lost all innocence; heat in this collection is a warning sign for a planet in decline, and at the same time it’s love – always love – that stirs the heat and gives it meaning. What does the future look like when you’re mourning both the climate and a lover? In the poem ik ben voor de liefde bewaard ik weet het vrij zeker (“i was kept for love i’m fairly sure”), Van Stokkum writes:

 


ashy meltwater and I was kept for love
the land is flooding but I think this will be the life in which I will learn my lesson
(the one about how I don’t need anyone)
for the moment I long for you like a parakeet longs for a door swinging open
I don’t know if anybody else smells the gas
I do know what your chest felt like
swaying underneath this head
can still point out a mole with precision

 

 

“Van Stokkum attempts to reconcile that vast, intangible and inevitable future with everyday life, which simply keeps on going,” wrote the Dutch newspaper Trouw about the collection. It’s the love poetry of today: you can no longer detach it from the world in which it manifests; there is always the oppressive threat of environmental disaster, no weather condition is harmless anymore, no forecast is innocent. And it is precisely that loss of innocence that Van Stokkum reflects in her other themes: longing, incantation, obsession. Everything influences everything. Van Stokkum’s poetry, as the opening lines of vriendin de hemel heeft de kleur van olie (“babe the sky has the color of oil”) show, is one great, seamless blending:

 


storm is coming but storm-force  does not always imply impact babe
you think i worry too much and you’re probably right
as you often are but the air is reflecting
and do you think i could have been a stormchaser babe?

 


Literary scholar, Germanist, and former director of the Poëziecentrum in Ghent, Carl De Strycker, places Van Stokkum’s poetry within the genre of nature poetry. Her colloquial poems, he argues, evoke vivid images of absurd situations that we are simultaneously becoming more and more accustomed to: “Summer is described as a season in which it’s unbearably hot, causing nature to scorch instead of bloom, and people and animals to become sluggish and listless instead of full of life.” Nevertheless, he reads Van Stokkum’s work as hopeful; in her collection, he says, the concept of “heat” ultimately emphasizes its productive rather than its destructive power.

 

Van Stokkum’s background in playwriting is evident – it gives her poems a compelling narrative voice and characters who feel as though they are standing right next to you. Her poems perch on your lap, nestle up to you, address you as “babe” and huddle up with you. That’s Van Stokkum’s work in a nutshell: she wants contact, response, connection. This isn’t poetry for those who wish to hide – this poetry speaks directly to you, reader, whether you like it or not.

 

Van Stokkum herself is inseparable from her work. As a performer, anthology editor (for the popular platform Poëzie is een Daad), editorial member (of the literary magazine De Revisor), and also as a teacher, she is committed to the visibility of poetry in the Netherlands. An art school student Van Stokkum once taught asked her how she manages to write about love – the most overused topic in poetry. Van Stokkum answered by referring to “the girls,” she did it for “the girls.” The student recognized herself: “I am one of the girls,” she later wrote on Goodreads, “so she basically wrote this for me. So cool!”

 

There’s a scorching song pulsing through Van Stokkum’s poems that you want to keep listening to. It’s poetry for and about the girls – though “the girls” doesn’t only include women, but people of all genders, people living now and long ago, plants, animals, spirits, longings – the whole bewitching thing together.

 

 

Sources
Ik zeg Emily, Yentl van Stokkum, Hollands Diep, 2021.
Winterbloeiers, Yentl van Stokkum, Hollands Diep, 2023.
“Yentl van Stokkum houdt oog voor de vleugelslag van een parkiet,” by Janita Monna for Trouw, 2024.
“Van winterbloei tot wrijfspanning: natuurpoëzie van Rozalie Hirs, Yentl van Stokkum, Lans Stroeve en Han van Wieringen,” by Carl De Strycker for De Lage Landen, 2024.

More about the poet

Poetry

  1. COME DO DOOMSDAY BABY / KOM DOOMSDAY DOEN BABY

  2. *** / ***

  3. IT’S THE WARMEST SUMMER ON RECORD BABE / VRIENDIN HET IS DE WARMSTE ZOMER OOIT GEMETEN

  4. HOW MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL COULD YOU BE NOW YOU’RE EATING PEACHES FOR BREAKFAST / HOEVEEL MOOIER KUN JE WORDEN NU JE MET PERZIKEN ONTBIJT

  5. BABE YOU’RE PUMPING WHILE I’M SITTING ON THE BED / VRIENDIN IK ZIT OP BED TERWIJL JE KOLFT

  6. I’M GETTING PRETTY GOOD AT PREDICTING THE FUTURE / IK WORD STEEDS BETER IN HET VOORSPELLEN

  7. AND SOMETIMES WE’RE JUST HAPPY / SOMS ZIJN WE OOK GEWOON GELUKKIG

  8. I’M WRITING THE FOLLOWING POEM FOR THE FUTURE / DIT GEDICHT MAAK IK VOOR DE TOEKOMST

  9. OH IT WAS A LUXURIOUS TIME / O HET WAS EEN LUXE TIJD