dutch – rozalie hirs

2024, calendar, dutch, news, poetry books

dagtekening van liefdesvormen (2024)

“Every collection by Rozalie Hirs is once again a new compendium of stunning sound-art in every sense of the word.” (Dietske Geerlings, Tzum)

“This musicality is, of course, connected to her background as a composer, but it is equally shaped by her exuberant handling of language and the way she, as it were, plays the words themselves.” (Helena Van Praet, Poëziekant)

“The language flows and is full of shifts in sound. Hirs also dares to abandon conventional syntax. Sentences and clauses can often be connected in multiple ways, which naturally makes you read slowly and attentively. It’s a tried-and-true method in her oeuvre by now, but it need not obstruct understanding—if that is even the point.” (Alfred Schaffer, De Groene)

“More than an autobiography, this is a book of love poems—a collection in which love takes place. Just as in ecologica, Rozalie Hirs practices in dagtekening van liefdesvormen a kind of romanticism that never lays claim to what it sings of—not the other, and not the singing self. A romanticism that is free and frees, surrendering itself to ‘that dumb luck of becoming.’” (Joost Baars, Awater)

2023, calendar, dutch, poetry books, poetry events

ecologica (2023)

“It is her most daring and possibly most personal collection to date, in the sense that the poet’s voice sounds more pervasively forceful than ever” (Helena Van Praet, Poëziekrant)

“The best-kept secret of Dutch poetry. Rozalie Hirs writes poems like no one else does. Lyrical, musical, intuitive and very precise.” (Joost Baars, De Dolfijn)

“That way the words of Hirs, who is also active as a composer, are like music: the chords flow into one another rhythmically, quite oblivious of the boundaries of a sentence.” (Jeroen Dera, De Standaard)

“Hirs has managed to fashion a very urgent contemporary problem, climate change, into a lyrical stream of words. Doing so, she connects the magic of poetry to the biting irony of protest.” (Helena Van Praet, Poëziekrant)

2021, calendar, dutch, poetry books, poetry events

oneindige zin (infinite sense, 2021)

“Once more, in this collection Hirs proves that she can create a play of poetic language like nobody else. (…) Hirs’s ingenious tour de force stands right in the twenty-first century.” (Helena Van Praet, De Reactor) “Departing from this moment of receptivity, Hirs embarks on a surprising and overwhelming exploration […]

2025, calendar, dutch, other language, poetry books

poetry bibliography

alphabetical list of all poems by rozalie hirs, their translations, and publications in books, magazines, and anthologies. chronological lists of poetry books, magazines, and anthologies.

2017, dutch, poetry books

further particulars (2017)

further particulars (Dutch: verdere bijzonderheden; Amsterdam: Singel Uitgeverijen| Querido, 2017) is the sixth full-length Dutch poetry book by Rozalie Hirs, published by the Amsterdam-based renowned publisher Uitgeverij Querido.

2012, dutch, poetry books

gestamelde werken (work in stuttering, 2012)

In her fifth poetry collection, work in stuttering (Dutch: gestamelde werken), Rozalie Hirs embraces beauty in multiple ways of reading, a multiplicity of possibilities.

2008, dutch, poetry books

geluksbrenger (lucky charm, 2008)

“The musical poetry of Geluksbrenger (Amsterdam: Querido, The Netherlands, 2008) by Rozalie Hirs is constructed along the line of a ‘counterpoint’. Within a poem, Hirs seems to be stacking different poems on top of each other, processing them, splicing them, mixing them, shaking them, letting them flow into one another. And this is one single motion. In one breath. In sustained breath.” (Alain Delmotte, Poëzierapport)

2008, dutch, poetry books

het komt voor (2008)

15 oktober 2008 het komt voor (as it happens; 2008) is a bibliophile poetry book by Rozalie Hirs with visual art by Marijke van Warmerdam, published bij Uitgeverij 69, Hilversum, The Netherlands. The book design is by publisher Wolfram Swets. The chapbook contains three poems by Rozalie and original poëzo […]

2005, calendar, dutch, poetry books

[speling] ([leeway], 2005)

“What is striking about [Speling], the third poetry book by Rozalie Hirs, is its strong composition: the collection opens with a one-line poem about dreaming and thought. With each consecutive poem, the poems’ length increases by one line until the whole has grown into a pathway, a poem that fills the entire page, to finally explode into the showpiece of In LA, a text spanning many pages. The reader moves within the ‘leeway’ (which is how the Dutch title [speling] could be translated) between dreaming and thinking, words and lines. The first sentence introduces the elements for the rest of the collection. Hirs is looking for the moments in which experience is no longer restricted to the single body, but extends itself to the other or even to the entire world.” (Edwin Fagel, De Recensent)

2002, dutch, poetry books

logos (2002)

Logos, Rozalie Hirs’ second collection of poems, has the reader traveling through the human body. Inside the book there is an anatomical drawing, made by artist Noëlle von Eugen, by which the reader can navigate through the collection. The ‘logos’ of the title might refer to the laws of the body, of thought, the imagination, and the word. In the many love poems, the beloved turns out to be a human being of flesh and blood, and at the same time, language.

dutch, poetry books

locus (1998)

In her first collection, Locus, Rozalie Hirs plays with identities. The poems are new monologues by characters from Greek mythology, philosophy, the Christian tradition, theatre plays, and films. Hirs presents her archetypical characters in critical situations and lets them tell their version of the story. Most of these poems deal with taking decisions, and with the ambiguity of situations in which we find ourselves in the world.