Love poetry on the Internet

This video is about Dutch poetess Anne Vegter.

From Poetry International in the Netherlands:

It’s been a busy month so far here at Poetry International. We kicked off February with the first annual Dutch-language Poetry Week. During this week all kinds of poetry activities took place in the Netherlands and Flanders, including the VSB Poetry Prize awards, which saw Ester Naomi Perquin take home the prize for her collection Celinspecties (Cell Inspections). This year we also saw former Dutch Poet Laureate Ramsey Nasr replaced by Anne Vegter, and attended the very first national Poetry Ball in Amsterdam.

Now, to help you celebrate (or ignore) Valentine’s Day in style, we’ve collected a number of articles, poems, audio recordings, and videos for the occasion.In several articles from our substantial archives, poets from India, Israel, and Japan talk about having to fight those we love, the torments of love, and poetry as love.

You can also take our love poem tour. Below are a number of poems from around the world, selected by our staff and covering love from all different angles:

“I LOVE SLEEP” by Ouyang Yu (Australia)
LOVE’S BANKS by Leonard Nolens (Belgium)
THE 50 LOVERS THAT LIVE IN MY BODY by Chen Kehua (China)
5. THE SKY LOVES YOU SILENTLY by Milko Valent (Croatia)
AGAINST LOVE by Charl-Pierre Naudé (South Africa)
HOW TO TELL THE AGE OF A HORSE, A LOVE POEM by Ronny Someck (Israel)
TO A LOVE POET by Dennis O’Driscoll (Ireland)
MY FIRST PROPER GIRLFRIEND by Robert Adamson (Australia)
PORTRAIT OF THE HUSBAND AS FARMERS’ MARKET by Tiffany Atkinson (United Kingdom)
WHAT WE DON’T TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE by Damir Šodan (Croatia)
WHY DOES THE POET TAKE HIS WIFE OUT TO MCDONALD’S? by Jalal el- Hakmaoui (Morocco)
THE POET’S FRIEND by Jotamario Arbeláez (Colombia)
LINOLEUM AND LOVE by Noel Rowe (Australia)
LOVE IS A HABIT by Megan Hall (South Africa)
NEW LOVER by Shuijing Zhulian (China)
AN EDITOR’S PREFACE TO THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE (VOLUME 3) by Helen Mort (United Kingdom)
LOVE by Cecilie Løveid (Norway)
LOGIC IN LOVE by Esther Jansma (Netherlands)

Our video pick of the week is Thomas McCarthy’s ‘How to Recognise Your Lover’. Be sure to check our homepage (or our Facebook page) every day for the next week for a new love-related audio Poem of the Day.

The release of Anne Enquist’s new poetry collection Een kook van klank (A Cage of Sound) marked the start of the 2013 Dutch-language Poetry Week. Readers who bought poetry in the Netherlands during the Week of Poetry also received Anna Enquist’s collection as a gift.

All of the poems in Een kooi van klank also appeared on the Poetry International website, accompanied by English translations and readings by Enquist herself.