years saw the development of virtual reality (VR) poetry as a subset of electronic literature and VR art. This article examines the interplay between estrangement and immersion in two Dutch-language VR poems by poet Micha Hamel and developer Demian Albers. To explore how the lyrical mode intersects with the embodied and virtual affordances of VR technology, we draw on Jonathan Culler's theory on the lyrical 'triangulated address.' We discuss how this theory serves to analyse the self-reflexive strategies used in these VR poems, as well as the self-reflexive potential of VR poetry. Given the inherently embodied nature of VR technology, we argue that VR poetry opens up new possibilities for reconsidering the embodied dimensions of the lyric genre.
Demeyer and Vitse (2018, 2020) argue that contemporary Dutch-language fiction reveals a dominant focus on affective questions and concerns about attachment and connection to the world and to the other. This article aims to examine to what extent this hypothesis of the 'affective dominant' applies to contemporary Dutch-language poetry. It verifies this hypothesis in close readings of three recently published poetry collections, by Frank Keizer, Maxime Garcia Diaz and Dewi de Nijs Bik. We argue that these poetry collections also evoke a subjective experience of the world which is primarily affective, in the sense that it is primarily an experience of being violently and painfully affected by the world. The subject is exposed to the violence of political depression (Keizer), to the violence of misogynist digital culture (Garcia Diaz) and to the violence of intergenerational (post)colonial wounding (De Nijs Bik). In these poetry collections this affective focus is-more explicitly than in contemporary fiction-overdetermined by political and ideological critique. We contend that the affective is epistemologically mediated by frames derived from neomarxism, postcolonialism and gender critique. This epistemological mediation affords the possibility to move towards a reparative position of healing, connection and resilience.
This article explores the tension between physical suffering and spiritual emancipation in Anna Ampt's Schaduwbeelden uit Suriname (1858). While her poetry aligns with a sentimental rhetoric of abolition, depicting the corporal torments of the enslaved in much graphic detail, it frames true liberation as a matter of the mind rather than the body. Situating Ampt within Dutch Protestant abolitionism, this study examines how her poetry reflects missionary ideals and racial hierarchies, ultimately revealing how Christian antislavery discourse often deferred real emancipation in favor of religious salvation.
In literary contexts, breathing has predominantly been explored as theme, metaphor, and symbol in written poetry. However, actual breathing by real performers in oral poetry has barely been investigated. In this article, the results are presented of close listenings that were conducted on more than fourteen hours of video and audio recordings of Dutch-language poetry performances at the Nacht van de Po & euml;zie Festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands, between 2019 and 2024. Breathing turns out to have a thematic, iconic, poetic, self-reflexive, temporal, rhythmic, liminal, grammatical, metaphysical, empty, genre-characteristic, formal, theatrical, affective, ambiguous and paratextual function. Also, non-breathing proves to be meaningful. Similar to the meaningful role of white space in written poetry, breathing is essential to meaning-making in poetry performances.
