Down a slope

Show Tellegen

A life passes by in Toon Tellegen's new poems. Memories of the past alternate with reflections on the passing of time. Slowly we slide down a slope and our time runs out. But we fervently hope for a way out, as in the poem "Supplication":

A man on his knees,

Praying to someone he doesn't know:

"give me this day my daily bread and an emergency exit"

that bread he gets, more than he can eat -

he is buried under it, intoxicated by its smell

and as he chokes on bread,

that comes down in ever-increasing amounts,

he hears a voice whispering in his ear:

'that emergency exit, why do you want it?'

Toon Tellegen (1941) has received numerous awards: he received the Theo Thijssen Prize, the Hendrik de Vries Prize and the Constantijn Huygens Prize for his oeuvre.

About Toon Tellegen's poetry:

'For an impressive oeuvre, Tellegen has succeeded in capturing the greatest, the most incomprehensible, the most complex - love, hate, aversion, God, life, peace, death - in poems of enigmatic simplicity.' Fidelity