For whom time passes

Miriam Van Hee

Miriam Van hee published her first poems in 1978. With her debut het karige maal it was crystal clear that this would be the beginning of a masterful poethood. for whom time passes is her ninth collection and still and again she manages to make the reader coincide with the world she describes: 'you are silent in the forest when you are looking for mushrooms, you hear the song of the finches, an unreliable wind plays in the chestnut trees'.

In clear rhythmic sentences, Miriam Van shares everyday observations, and through her choice of words and distribution of the lines she manages to reveal a greater truth. 'She balances on the tightrope between the sayable and the unsayable,' wrote Luuk Gruwez about where the light falls, 'for everything to be remembered, it must first be seen. It takes a poet of this caliber to open our eyes to this.'