Earlier this season, Perdu hosted a poetry reading and lecture with Juliana Spahr and Joshua Clover. Perdu is honoured to share its stage again with two great American poets. Peter Gizzi and Matvei Yankelevich will read a selection of their poems that also have been translated into Dutch. While Gizzi’s poems previously were translated by Samuel Vriezen, this evening will be the first presentation of Yankelevich’s poetry in Dutch, translated for Perdu by Jeske van der Velden. Emerging Dutch poet Nadia de Vries will perform new poems based on her reading of Gizzi and Yankelevich, and to conclude the evening, all the participants will participate in a panel discussion, which will be moderated by Frank Keizer and Michele Hutchinson. Perdu editor Obe Alkema will give a short introduction to the poets to kick off this program.

Click here to read Peter Gizzi’s poet page (profile written by, and poems translated by, Samuel Vriezen) on the website of Poetry International Rotterdam. Gizzi was a festival poet in 2014.

Click here to read poems by Gizzi (translated by Mischa Andriessen) on the website of the literary magazine Terras.

Click here to read Matvei Yankelevich’s profile on the Poetry Foundation website.

Click here to read poems by Nadia de Vries on the website Enclave.

Peter Gizzi (1959) is poet and editor. He was involved in publishing the collected lectures and poems of the American poet Jack Spicer. His most recent publications are The Outernationale (2007) and Threshold Songs (2011). A new collection of poetry called Archeophonics will be published in the fall.

Matvei Yankelevich (1973) is poet, translator and editor. He translated, for example, the work of Daniil Kharms. In 2009 he published his novel-in-fragments Boris by the Sea. His most recent collection of poetry is Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt (2015). He is the founding editor and co-director of Ugly Duckling Presse in New York.

Jeske van der Velden (1987) studied at the University of Utrecht and completed the Masters program in Literary Translations. She is an editor at Terras and has translated poetry for that magazine, as well as for the poetry festival Dichters in de Prinsentuin. She was the recipient of a translation grant for talented literary translators from the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

Nadia de Vries (1991) is an Amsterdam-based poet and has published two chapbooks. In 2015, she published First Communion, and in 2016, R.I.P Nadia de Vries. She is working on a PhD at ASCA, entitled Digital Deaths. In her project, De Vries analyzes web-based mourning rituals (such as Facebook remembrance profiles) and how they are aestheticized in contemporary art and poetry.

Obe Alkema (1993) is an editor at Perdu and a poet.

Michele Hutchison (1972) was born in the UK and has lived in Amsterdam for twelve years. She worked as an editor at Poetry International and is now a freelance literary translator and writer/blogger. She has translated novels by Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, Tom Lanoye and Esther Gerritsen amongst others and is currently working on Mens dier ding by poet Alfred Schaffer.

Frank Keizer (1987) is a poet and an essayist. He published two chapbooks at a press called Stanza, respectively Dear world, fuck off, ik ga golfen (2012) and Mijn eigen problemen (2015). Recently he published his new collection of poetry called Onder normale omstandigheden (2016) at Uitgeverij Polis. He is founding editor, with Maarten van der Graaff, of online literary magazine Samplekanon. He also is an editor of Flemish literary magazine nY.

The poetry readings of Peter Gizzi, Matvei Yankelevich and Nadia de Vries can be seen here: