Playing with sound in multiple layers of meaning and with multiple possibilities for reading leads to a ‘fluid’ poetry. Among these layers, the reader may choose again and again, thus to a large extent shaping his own reading experience. A multiplicity of reading possibilities and identities has become Hirs’ poetical trademark, forming a bridge to her music. In 2010, her CD "Pulsars" was released. On this CD, Hirs investigates polyglot language and the simultaneity of streams of meaning in three electroacoustic works using original texts in English.
Beginnings On 10 May 1991 Rozalie Hirs presented her poetry for the first time to the public at the student festival for culture
De Pythische Spelen,
Enschede. She received the third prize for poetry and an invitation by Jan Kuijper, the renowned Amsterdam-based Querido's principal poetry editor at the time. In 1992 Hirs's poetry debut was published by the literary magazine
De Revisor. In 1995 she was awarded the first prize for poetry at
De Pythische Spelen, Amsterdam. Querido published her first poetry book
Locus in 1998, followed by
Logos (2002), and
Speling (
Leeway, 2005). Hirs' work was selected for
De 100 beste gedichten van 1998,
2002,
2005, and appeared in poetry collections, and literary magazines in The Netherlands (De Revisor, Tirade, De Gids, De Tweede Ronde, Lust en Gratie), Belgium (Poëziekrant, De Standaard), and Germany (Akzente, Carl Hanser Verlag; Sprachbuch, Ernst Klett Sprachen; Bohrmachine, Akademie der Künste, Berlin), and the United States.
Locus (1998) "In her first poetry book
Locus Rozalie Hirs plays with masks. Her poems are monologues of personages stemming from Greek mythology, philosophy, and the
Judeo-Christian tradition." In addition we find references to films, plays, and poems: for example, the poem
Man Bites Dog refers to the Belgian mockumentary
Man Bites Dog (
C’est arrivé près de chez vous) from 1992, while the poem
Lucifer refers to the eponymous play by
Joost van den Vondel from 1654 (and
John Milton's later
Paradise Lost). "The poet brings her archetypical personalities to life within the critical and formative circumstances, recalling the myth and presenting a new version of the tale. Almost without exception these poems deal with the ambiguity of situations we see ourselves confronted with in the world."
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, with which we find ourselves confronted through the world." Hirs included an anatomical map within the collection, by which the reader might navigate through the book as if it were a body. Visual artist Noëlle von Eugen created this map. Along with the body parts, she listed abbreviations for the titles of all the poems in which that body part appears. Since the anatomical map in fact functions as a hyperstructure of the collection,
Logos online came about.
Speling (2005) "How poetry imposes its own rules, is demonstrated unequivocally by the third collection of Rozalie Hirs (1965):
[Speling]." "The showpiece of the collection then is the ten-page long
[In LA], which can be read as a meditation on music and memory, and in which the words find themselves interspersed with a large amount of white space. The stuttering of the speaker gives the words weight and renders the meditations forceful. ‘LA’ is short for Louis Andriessen, whose utterances Hirs has collected and vocalized. It is a sober tribute to Andriessen's beautiful, heavy words, and the chosen form lends this thinking-out-loud a buzzing hesitance that every speaker experiences when trying to find language for grand things."
Counterpoint and fluidity With her following books
Geluksbrenger (
Lucky Charm, 2008),
gestamelde werken (
work in stuttering, 2012),
verdere bijzonderheden (
further particulars, 2017),
oneindige zin (
infinite sense, 2021),
ecologica (2023), and
dagtekening van liefdesvormen (2024), Hirs playfully develops her mature writing style, based on simultaneous multiplicities of meaning, possibilities of reading. In 2017 the Berlin-based Kookbooks published her multilingual compendium
gestammelte werke, containing original poems in Dutch, German, English and Spanish by the poet, and translations into more than ten languages by
Daniela Seel,
Henri Deluy, Diego Puls, Kim Andringa, Jelica Novakovic, Donald Gardner, Daniel Cunin, among others. In 2014 her poetry collection in Serbian translation
život mogućnosti appeared with Biblioteka Prevodi in Banja Luka, Bosnia & Herzegovina. In 2019 her poetry collection in Spanish translation
ahora es una rosa was published by Yauguru, Uruguay. In 2021 her poetry collection in Danish translation
spor af lykkebringer was published by Melodika forlaget, Copenhagen. Hirs' work was selected for
De 100 beste gedichten van 2008, and
2012, and appeared in poetry collections, and literary magazines in Belgium, Germany, France, Mexico, and the Netherlands.
Geluksbrenger (2008) "The musical poetry of
Geluksbrenger 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."
gestamelde werken (2012) "Hirs likes to go all the way, and thereby reaches for the highest points. She is a composer as well. Her best poems ‘sing’ and have a forceful melody." "As a poet, Rozalie Hirs is an impressionist who likes to show how her working process has unfolded. She writes sensitive verses that idiosyncratically try to bring about a connection between romanticism and mathematics." "Watch, just as you are seen. Name, just as you are named. Create, just as you are created. And read like a creator: stammering."
verdere bijzonderheden (2017) "Quietly, Hirs is working on a remarkable body of work. In it, the entire cosmos is heard, and it's the question if we're dealing with a single cosmos, or several at once." "Rozalie Hirs celebrates life in this collection: sensually, singing." "Immediately, a distinct voice starts to sound, a modest, yet clear voice, that takes advantage of the musicality as well as the semantics of language."
oneindige zin (2021) "This poetry is sensual, has an appetite for enjoyment and is looking for meaning, but can also be read as one unending sentence without punctuation." "Rozalie Hirs's
infinite sense is connected to infinite being, which keeps on flowing after our death. Hirs captures bits of this stream in her poetry and renders the heartbeat of language audible and palpable, constantly appealing to the reader to co-create an imaginary world in which poet and reader fleetingly coincide in language." "Departing from this moment of receptivity, Hirs embarks on a surprising and overwhelming exploration of language, time, space, humanity, nature, perception, memory." "Once more, in this collection Hirs proves that she can create a play of poetic language like nobody else."
ecologica (2023) "
ecologica 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. 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." "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." "The reader of this collection will be poised between despair and being profoundly moved."
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." "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." "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." "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.’"
Digital Poetry and installations In collaborating with visual artists and graphic designers Hirs creates digital poetry, and museum installations, including
Logos online (Dutch, 2003),
Family Tree app (Dutch, English, Chinese, Swedish; 2006),
Lucky charm online (multilingual, 2011),
Sightbook (English, 2012),
Curvices app (English, 2013),
oneindige zin digitaal (Dutch, 2023), and
the case for a small language network (Dutch, 2024).
Lucky charm online was released with poems, recordings and music (listening spaces, spoken word, and musical pieces with text) by Rozalie Hirs, and interactive poetry applications developed by Harm van den Dorpel. The interactive applications make the experience of reading, normally restricted to the page and the head of the reader, tangible and visible. As reader, one makes choices over and over again while reading, thereby actually recreating the text as one reads, usually more than one realizes. Interactive applications and digital poetry can provide an insight into these interventions into, and recreations of, the text, and show something of the reading experience, or even the writing experience of the poet. ==Discography==