Light Everywhere

Although best known in the English-speaking world for his acclaimed novels, essays and travel writing, Cees Nooteboom has always seen himself first and foremost as a poet: "Without poetry my life would be unthinkable.” This collection, selected by Nooteboom himself from more than a dozen Dutch books, covers his poetic output up to 2013, with an emphasis on his more recent work, most of which is published here in English for the first time. The poems are presented in reverse...
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Although best known in the English-speaking world for his acclaimed novels, essays and travel writing, Cees Nooteboom has always seen himself first and foremost as a poet: "Without poetry my life would be unthinkable.” This collection, selected by Nooteboom himself from more than a dozen Dutch books, covers his poetic output up to 2013, with an emphasis on his more recent work, most of which is published here in English for the first time. The poems are presented in reverse chronological order, reflecting the poet’s contemporary perspective on the productivity of more than half a century. Nooteboom’s work is lucid and mysterious, evocative and elusive, and it is fitting that the collection begins and ends with poems of travel, moving back in time from an elderly man’s entanglement and resignation to the detachment and harsh light of youth, with everything in between.