Robin Block
- The Netherlands -
Robin Block (1980) is an award-winning poet and musician. In his performances, he combines poetry, live soundscapes and movement.
As a poet, he came to prominence with his kaleidoscopic, polyphonic collection Handleiding voor ontheemden (Manual for the Displaced, 2023). This ambitious and multifaceted work was awarded the Granate Poetry Prize, the Herman de Coninck Prize, and the J.C. Bloem Prize. The collection was met with widespread critical acclaim, went through reprint after reprint and was translated into English and Indonesian.
Earlier, Block published the poetry collection Bestialen (Bestials, 2005) and, together with Angelina Enny, the bilingual volume In Between, Di Antara (2023). His poems have appeared in established Dutch-language literary journals such as Het Liegend Konijn, Revisor, Tirade and Awater. In addition, Block is active within the world of poetry as a columnist, creative writing instructor and editor. His poetry film Manual for the Displaced (created in collaboration with Jeremy Flohr) won the Dutch Poetry Film Festival and received several international awards.
On stage, Block stands out for the sensory richness and musicality of his performances. He frequently employs a looping station to accompany his readings with dreamlike soundscapes and hypnotic rhythms.
Where his debut collection Bestials wove together motifs such as human desire and various forms of violence, In Between, Di Antara already circles around the socially engaged themes that are virtuously interwoven in Manual for the Displaced: finding a home between countries, flags and generations, and exploring the interaction between personal history and the larger history surrounding it.
In his poetic tour de force Manual for the Displaced, he places this balancing act between the personal and the historical against the backdrop of a journey through contemporary Indonesia − the country of origin of his grandparents. Following Indonesian independence, they moved to the Netherlands and were compelled to make that country their home. How did their identity evolve? And what did that mean for the identity of the poet himself?
The opening poem, “My Blood”, translated by David Colmer, immediately sets the tone:
I still reek of tobacco, my veins branch out
through old plantations, my muscles
mix calmness and violence – a forefather’s
voice bellows in my throat
I have so much to prove
The poem, programmatic in nature, points the reader in the right direction from the outset, with these moving and candid closing lines:
Opa hides his war away
a knife in each eye
an abandoned boy in his smile
and I have flags
to rehang
and wreaths I don’t know where to lay
What follows is a compelling amalgam of voices, quotations, images and encounters. Block guides the reader through centuries of colonial history, via a primordial mother, an ancestor, the grandfather, a contemporary influencer. Much in this poetic journey grates, chafes, and aches, yet nowhere does the poet − with the gaze of an anthropologist rather than that of a judge − succumb to the temptation of a one-dimensional indictment. He possesses too much humour for that.
Autocorrect keeps saying ‘blood mixer’
when I try to write ‘bloom elixir’.
Why didn’t I just go to Norway?
A bit of sword swinging
on the side of a fjord
Or take this opening line from a companion poem, in which the poet is sitting in a coffee shop:
Password: ipissedinyourgoldentumericlattewithorganiccoconutmilk-youentitledfuck (‘no caps, hyphen after milk’)
Or this historical piece of advice to “our repatriated compatriots,” used as the ironic motto to one of the book’s sections:
After having spent so many years away from the Netherlands, it is highly
understandable that you will be unable to get enough of the Dutch dunes,
the green meadows and the windmill-dotted landscape.
If his subtle humour is one of his strongest weapons, there is ultimately something at stake here. “This scratches at the reader’s skin until it bleeds,” wrote poetry magazine Awater. Block’s journey is clearly not intended to please; rather, it constitutes a relentless search for his origins and, through them, for himself. What makes this work, this “manual”, so masterful and complete is that it leaves no nuance unexplored − not only thematically and historically, but poetically as well.
He throws open every register of his poetic craft, drawing on an intoxicating wealth of formal and linguistic variation. Here is a poet speaking at the height of his powers, achieving a successful union of poetic virtuosity and social urgency. What the Nobel Prize-worthy Antjie Krog evokes in her poetry through a wealth of images of the frictions of South Africa’s past and present, Block accomplishes for the historical relationship between the Netherlands and Indonesia − though, more broadly, for any form of identity-between-cultures.
Yet this poet is far from finished, as recent poems that will culminate in a new collection in 2027 already demonstrate. The processing of colonial history gives way here to very different but equally urgent themes, such as the impact of a bitter divorce, (toxic) masculinity, the relationship and rivalry between brothers, growing up in poverty amidst class divisions and the absence of adequate role models.
The father provides a striking example of the latter in the new poem “The Man Who Teaches Me to Fish”, translated by Michele Hutchison:
[…]
‘it’s the same as with women,’ the man says
‘if you get a rise, wait for them to bite’
I think of my mother’s overbite, of the places where sweet and salty
mingle, the things she shouts when I’m supposed to be asleep,
cursing the man who starts his car, the stains
on her teeth when she storms into my room
my rod bends
the man’s hand
enfolds mine
I’m amazed at the strength
beneath those murky waters
something latches on, keeps fighting
Pitilessly honest, confrontational and at the same time deeply moving poetry to look forward to, from a poet who continues, fortunately, to sink his teeth in and keep fighting. In search of a “home”.
Poetry
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LP3G / LP3G
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EXIT / UITRIT
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JAKARTA / JAKARTA
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TECTONIC PLATES / AARDPLATEN
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THE MAN WHO TEACHES ME TO FISH / DE MAN DIE MIJ LEERT VISSEN
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THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE / HET SPOOK IN DE MACHINE
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THE DEAD PAID US A VISIT / DE DODEN BEZOCHTEN ONS
