Willem Hussem has been a long time favorit of mine and not only for his paintings , but also his poetry is remarkable. Influenced by the rythme of japanese poetry , Hussem began to write his poems as early as 1950. He is becoming deservedly more and more known for his poems of which one recently found a place on a wall in the city of Leiden. It is the same poem as the one that graces the cover of the book which was published in 1977 by Bert Bakker and Nouvelles Images which is now available at http://www.ftn-books.com

Where do you draw the line between the art of painting and poetry? Willem Hussem started out as a painter of landscapes and portraits but from the 1950s onwards his work became more abstract. This way, he hoped to capture the essence of an image, a technique he also used in his poetry. His poems became shorter and more powerful, which is also evident in this poem, in which Willem Hussem uses words to paint the beach of Scheveningen.

After his return to the Netherlands, Hussem also started writing poetry. His first collection of poems, De kustlijn (The coastline), was published in 1949. In subsequent collections the sea also plays a prominent role. The beach of Scheveningen, on which this poem is based, was his primary source of inspiration. Hussem mostly wrote short poems in which he ‘painted’ images for which he received the Dutch Jan Campert award for poetry in 1965.

Translated it is :

PUT THE BLUE

Put the blue
of the sea
against the
blue of the
heavens, wipe
some white
of a sail
in it and the
wind starts to blow

the book is available at http://www.ftn-books.com