Locations Outdoor Art exhibition

Ensemble

Our voice entails an ambiguous art
it unites us and sets me apart

Mijn tegenstem hinkt zonder jouw melodie
en mank is ze lang zo krachtig niet

We travel the earth and each other’s worlds
Wipe away borders with the soles of our feet

En zingen meerstemmig in tientallen talen 
een grenzeloos lied

Mieke van Zonneveld
Mieke van Zonneveld (1989) is a poet and Dutch teacher. She’s born and raised in Hilversum and after her studies, she returned to her hometown. From 2018 to 2021 she was the city poet of Hilversum. The first poem she wrote as a city poet was painted on the wall of the school where Van Zonneveld herself works as a Dutch teacher. The idea for this poem came about in consultation with students. It is a bilingual poem about multiple voices, which reflects the international and open atmosphere of the school.

Van Zonneveld won the national Turing poetry competition in 2013 and made her debut at The Busy Bee in early 2017 with her collection Leger. This one was very well received. She won the Eline van Haaren prize, the Eijlders poetry prize, and the Lucy B and C W Van der Hoogtprijs and Luuk Gruwez called it in De Standaard "perhaps the best debut in years". The jury of the Van der Hoogtprijs 2019 described the bundle as follows in its jury report:

"The commitment of van Zonneveld's poetry is great and she takes her work very seriously, without any trace of irony. For example, she writes: "My psalms fell silent or became only lip service. / Weighed in the cavity of my hand, God did not understand them either." Also in the long 'Diary of a Spring Girl' the desire for earthly happiness, for a love paradise prevails. [...] In addition, her great attention to the musicality of the language with subtle use of stylist alliteration, enjambement, inner rhyme and sometimes end rhyme should be added. [...] It is for the sum of a large number of very special stylistic and formal qualities that the jury unanimously awards the Lucy B. and C.W. van der Hoogt prize of the year 2019 to Mieke van Zonneveld for her debut collection Leger. Van Zonneveld testifies in this collection of important poetry, whose sources of inspiration go back from classical antiquity to Herman Gorter, from the Bible, Paradise and even an almost fateful sickbed. [...] her poetry already holds a great promise."

City poet Hilversum