Overview

After first making her mark as a compelling performer, Belgian poet Charlotte Van den Broeck was acclaimed as one of Europe’s most innovative and original new voices in poetry following the publication of her first collection Chameleon in 2015. Her first English translation combines her debut volume with her second book Nachtroer (2017), its untranslatable title the name of all-night shop in Antwerp where she lives. Chameleon is a set of apparently naïve but knowingly ironic, playful and subversive poems which trace a girl’s search for a woman’s identity, a coming-of-age exploration of body and language drawing on memories, shapes and landscapes. In Nachtroer her poems take a nighttime journey through heartbreak, insomnia and the hectic flow of daily life, driven by a desire for disappearance, displacement and dissolution. Chameleon ends with taking to the ocean. Nachtroer’s last poem is about building a boat for such a voyage. Chameleon / Nachtroer sets the two books afloat in English.

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9781780374475

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Reviews

This poetry parades like the chameleon in various appearances…in streaming language and unlikely, striking images. * Humo, on Chameleon * This is carefully accurate poetry, eloquent and adventurous, and truly authentic. That someone’s second book can be so audacious and dauntless is remarkable. -- VSB poëzieprijs 2018 jury, on Nachtroer

This poetry parades like the chameleon in various appearances...in streaming language and unlikely, striking images. * Humo, on Chameleon * This is carefully accurate poetry, eloquent and adventurous, and truly authentic. That someone's second book can be so audacious and dauntless is remarkable. -- VSB poezieprijs 2018 jury, on Nachtroer

Author Information

Charlotte Van den Broeck was born in Turnhout, Belgium, in 1991. After studies in English and German, she took a Masters in Drama at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp. She has published two collections of poetry, Kameleon (2015), which was awarded the Herman De Coninck debut prize for poetry by a Flemish author, and Nachtroer (2017), which was nominated for VSB Poetry Prize 2018 and the Ida Gerhard Prize. These two volumes are combined in Chameleon / Nachtroer, translated from the Dutch by David Colmer (Bloodaxe Books, 2020). Her poetry has also been translated into German, Spanish, French, Serbian and Arabic. In 2016 she opened the Frankfurt Bookfair together with Dutch poet Arnon Grunberg. In 2017 she was one of that year’s Versopolis poets, performing at several European festivals including Ledbury in Britain. As well as publishing critically acclaimed collections she is renowned for her distinctive performances, which are differ from UK/US versions of spoken word as theatre pieces ‘searching for the speakability and experience of oral poetry’, now presented in English as well as Dutch.

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