Heel dichtbij
ik zie lichtjes in je ogen
kom eens heel dichtbij
ik zie mij
je ogen zijn twee spiegeltjes
zie jij het ook bij mij
Uit: Lichtjes in je ogen, Uitgeverij Querido
Hans & Monique Hagen
Hans Hagen was born in 1955 in 's-Graveland and attended secondary school in Hilversum. Since 1987 Hans has been a full-time writer, before that he worked as a Dutch and history teacher. Hans wrote historical novels and collections of poetry for youngsters. He received a Golden Griffel prize for Drummers dance, and six Silver Griffels. ‘Sold’ was awarded the Woutertje Pieterse Prize.
Monique Hagen was born in 1956 in Leiden. She attended secondary school in Hilversum. She is a graduated kindergarten and drama teacher. From 1987 to 2003 Monique presented the children’s program ‘Het Klokhuis’ of the NPS. She also worked on several radio and TV programs.
In 1988 their first poetry collection for young children was published. In the meantime, 16 of their books have been published together. The best known is the poetry collection ‘Jij bent de liefste’, of which 270,000 copies have been sold. Together they received two Silver Griffels: for the anthology ‘ik zoek een woord’ and the poetry-picture book ‘Nooit denk ik aan niets’. In ‘loud Poetry’ there are 35 poetry columns they wrote for Het Parool. Hans and Monique provide poetry lessons and lectures for school classes, teacher teams, and teacher training.
Hans: "Writing together, how does that work? We get that question a lot. One of us starts with a few sentences or words, the other goes through with it. We sometimes e-mail a poem 30 times back and forth while sitting next to each other at a desk. In the end, we don't even know who came up with which word or phrase. The deal is that we keep going until we both get along. We started writing poems when our daughter Imme was about two years old. The ideas almost came naturally. Imme saw for example the lights of the Christmas tree in the eyes of Hans. That's how we came up with the idea for the poem 'Very close'."
Photo: Amber Beckers