Advance Payment: Selected Poems Translated by David Colmer

Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation


 

This selection introduces a major poet who is also a business studies professor, a combination which may explain his vigorous questioning of human values in poetry which asks `What is worthwhile?’ His poems are characterized by simplicity and clarity, narrative and reasoning: he claims they `at least promise to be about the important things in everyone’s life.’

Nachoem M. Wijnberg, born in Amsterdam in 1961, has published fourteen volumes of poetry. A Law and Economics graduate, he became in 2005 the first Professor of Cultural Entrepreneurship and Management at the University of Amsterdam Business School. His poetry has won many prizes, including the Jan Campert Prize, the Ida Gerhardt Prize and the most prestigious Dutch prize for poetry, the VSB Poetry Prize.

 

David Colmer is an Australian writer and translator based in Holland. He was awarded the New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize and PEN Medallion and is a two-time winner of the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize. His translations include Martinus Nijhoff’s Awater and selections from Ramsey Nasr, Cees Nooteboom and Hugo Claus.