27 July 2024. Today, De Standaard publishes the interview with Rozalie Hirs ‘Love and courage, you need the two’ by Jelle van Riet (interview: Jelle Van Riet; photography: Desiré van den Berg). Van Riet is a Flemish journalist, writer and podcast maker, known for more than 20 years for her many interviews in the literary field. In the new interview, she writes, among other things:

‘Between two worlds, that’s where [Rozalie Hirs] likes to wander. Between blooming and withering roses. In her Jan Campert Prize-winning collection ecologica (2023), too, she lets nature sing in all its wondrous yet merciless power. Hirs is a poet and composer. The two are intertwined, resulting in a flowing poetry. The poet sets the course for you, but you are also free. She uses neither capitals nor punctuation, the words seem adrift. You imagine yourself underwater.’

‘We are soft and movable, wherever we exist.’

‘I have always been extraordinarily curious, and in my work I have gone on a quest for new land: a new language. I am not religious, but I do believe in the desire to believe. Perhaps I am a mystic, because I am interested in what we cannot know. The desire gives a sense of direction to how we want to live, and in my own case it is with love in the broadest sense.’

‘The love for language, music and sciences was instilled in me at an early age. My father was a scientist, but there was also a lot of reading and singing at home. I always wrote, sang and drew and found that to be natural until I discovered that it is not by any means so obvious for everybody. In fact, I have always felt like an artist.’

‘That her trajectory has branched out along places and languages, Hirs traces to her bilingualism. […] ‘The fact that I grew up bilingual gives me an expanded relationship with my mother tongue and it also explains, I think, the great affinity the Flemish have with my work.’’

‘The physical is an essential part of Hirs’ creative process. ‘Not only when creating a new harmony do I want to physically feel if the notes and timing are right. With poetry too, I am constantly reading and listening to what I create, because my poems talk back. […] My collections may seem constructed or conceptual, but their forms gradually present themselves to me during the creative process and can emerge simply as I surrender. This is an interesting paradox. Life itself is also a poem, but one you keep tinkering with forever.’

‘I enjoy playing immensely and cultivate that, because that’s where I feel the happiest. Playing leads to new experiences and new solutions

Ecologica is highly political and at the same time I am a poet who writes out of great wonder for nature and language.’

Read the full interview by Jelle with Rozalie online on De Standaard or in the paper.