Wim Brands
(Brummen, NL, 1959 - Amsterdam, 2016) was a poet, journalist, and media presenter. At a young age he debuted as a poet in the Dutch literary magazine Hollands Maandblad. Since then he has published books of poetry quite regularly, such as Neem me mee zei de hond (Take Me With You Said the Dog, 2010). After the publication of his first collection Inslag (Impact, 1985), he began working as an interviewer for the VPRO broadcasting company. Later he became head producer of the Radio 6 programme "De Avonden." Since 2005 he talked to writers on VPRO's book programme "Boeken" on both TV and radio. He put together Briefgeheimen (Postcard Secrets, 2007), a colourful compilation of postcards linked to a website where people can divulge their deepest secrets. Overkomst dringend gewenst (Return Voyage Urgently Requested), his anthology of the work of poet Jan Emmens, was published in 2012, and his most recent poetry collection, 's Middags zwem ik in de Noordzee (In the Afternoons I Swim in the North Sea) in 2014. Brands was one of the "Lonely Departure" poets who compose and present a final poetic tribute to people who pass away without friends or family.
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Archive available for: Wim Brands
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Wim Brands Reading Club: Falling Out of Time, by David Grossman
With: Sanne Terlouw, Toef Jaeger, Wim Brands
Wim Brands, maker and host of the VPRO Boeken (Books) programme on radio and television, discusses festival guest David Grossman's novel Falling Out of time (2012) with the audience. But first, Dutch writers Sanne Terlouw and Toef Jaeger present their thoughts about the book.
Five years after the death of his son killed in war, Israeli writer David Grossman succeeds in the nearly impossible undertaking of writing about this loss in Falling Out of Time. The book's protagonist goes "there" to see his dead son. Along the way he is joined by fathers and mothers who can find no peace after the death of their child. In a long procession they pass by the Centaur, who has tried for years to put his grief about the death of his son into words. Writing, he says, is the only way to understand something. Finally he manages to find the right words, but at a high price: by finishing his memorial he has permanently lost his son.
Afterwards, you can attend the programme in which David Grossman is interviewed by Lex Bohlmeijer.
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The Text of My Life: Bas Heijne
In the Filmhuis Studio the festival's guest writers present their favourite literary texts and explain why a particular poem, novel excerpt, or song lyric influenced their life and work. Which memory, what feeling does this text call up for them? A continuous interview programme, in which the audience also talks with the writers. Hosted by Wim Brands and Fidan Ekiz. In Dutch.
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The Text of My Life: Vamba Sherif
In the Filmhuis Studio the festival's guest writers present their favourite literary texts and explain why a particular poem, novel excerpt, or song lyric influenced their life and work. Which memory, what feeling does this text call up for them? A continuous interview programme, in which the audience also talks with the writers. Hosted by Wim Brands and Fidan Ekiz. In Dutch.
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The Text of My Life: Dominique Goblet
In the Filmhuis Studio the festival's guest writers present their favourite literary texts and explain why a particular poem, novel excerpt, or song lyric influenced their life and work. Fado singer Cristina Branco joins in. Which memory, what feeling does this text call up for them? A continuous interview programme, in which the audience also talks with the writers. Hosted by Wim Brands and Fidan Ekiz. In English.
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The Text of My Life: Maaza Mengiste
In the Filmhuis Studio the festival's guest writers present their favourite literary texts and explain why a particular poem, novel excerpt, or song lyric influenced their life and work. Which memory, what feeling does this text call up for them? A continuous interview programme, in which the audience also talks with the writers. Hosted by Wim Brands and Fidan Ekiz. In English.
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The Text of My Life: Louise O. Fresco
In the Filmhuis Studio the festival's guest writers present their favourite literary texts and explain why a particular poem, novel excerpt, or song lyric influenced their life and work. Which memory, what feeling does this text call up for them? A continuous interview programme, in which the audience also talks with the writers. Hosted by Wim Brands and Fidan Ekiz. In Dutch.
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The Text of My Life: Stefan Hertmans
In the Filmhuis Studio the festival's guest writers present their favourite literary texts and explain why a particular poem, novel excerpt, or song lyric influenced their life and work. Which memory, what feeling does this text call up for them? A continuous interview programme, in which the audience also talks with the writers. Hosted by Wim Brands and Fidan Ekiz. In Dutch.
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The Text of My Life: Cynthia McLeod
In the Filmhuis Studio the festival's guest writers present their favourite literary texts and explain why a particular poem, novel excerpt, or song lyric influenced their life and work. Which memory, what feeling does this text call up for them? A continuous interview programme, in which the audience also talks with the writers. Hosted by Wim Brands and Fidan Ekiz. In Dutch.
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The Text of My Life: Gustaaf Peek
In the Filmhuis Studio the festival's guest writers present their favourite literary texts and explain why a particular poem, novel excerpt, or song lyric influenced their life and work. Which memory, what feeling does this text call up for them? A continuous interview programme, in which the audience also talks with the writers. Hosted by Wim Brands and Fidan Ekiz. In Dutch.
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The Text of my Life: Nina Polak
In the Filmhuis Studio the festival's guest writers present their favourite literary texts and explain why a particular poem, novel excerpt, or song lyric influenced their life and work. Which memory, what feeling does this text call up for them? A continuous interview programme, in which the audience also talks with the writers. Hosted by Wim Brands and Fidan Ekiz. In Dutch.
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Wim Brands Reading Club: De Ontheemden (Les Desorientés) by Amin Maalouf
With: Fouad Laroui, Petra Stienen, Wim Brands
Wim Brands, maker and host of the VPRO-programme Brands met Boeken (Brands with Books) on radio and television discusses the Dutch translation of Amin Maalouf's latest novel with the audience. Two writers, Arabist Petra Stienen and Fouad Laroui, lecturer in Arabic culture and French literature at the University of Amsterdam, first give their opinion about the book. Read this beautiful novel and join the Reading Club.
The main character in the novel De ontheemden (The Disoriented) is Adam, a historian. He lives in exile in Paris, far away from Lebanon, the country he had to flee twenty-five years earlier. But one telephone call is enough to make him return at once. An old friend is dying and wants to see Adam one more time. In Lebanon Adam rediscovers the people and the places he used to love so much. His friends have all made different choices; some of them have blood on their hands. But who is Adam to judge them? Wasn't his exile a luxury, which made him distance himself from the difficulties his friends had to struggle with? '
In an excellent way Amin Maalouf gives an insight into the thoughts and feelings that can lead to emigration. […] A splendid, impressive novel.' Le Monde des Livres
'Maalouf writes exciting novels of an exceptionally high level.' NRC HandelsbladOn Sunday morning 12 January the literary programme Brands met Boeken on the tv channel Nederland 1 was be dedicated to Amin Maalouf. You can watch the English spoken interview here.
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The Text of my Life: Elisabeth van Nimwegen
Which texts from world literature has Dutch writer Elisabeth van Nimwegen cherished as long as she lives? This most beautiful or most inspiring text can be a poem, an excerpt from a novel or a song-text. She discusses the text with the audience. In Dutch.
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The Text of my Life: Nihad Sirees
Which texts from world literature has Syrian writer Nihad Sirees cherished as long as he lives? This most beautiful or most inspiring text can be a poem, an excerpt from a novel or a song-text. He discusses the text with the audience. In English.
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The Text of my Life: Noreena Hertz
Which texts from world literature has econonomist and writer Noreena Hertz from Great Britain cherished as long as she lives? This most beautiful or most inspiring text can be a poem, an excerpt from a novel or a song-text. She discusses the text with the audience. In English.
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The Text of my Life: Arie Boomsma
Which texts from world literature has Dutch poetry anthologist and tv anchor Arie Boomsma cherished as long as he lives? This most beautiful or most inspiring text can be a poem, an excerpt from a novel or a song-text. He discusses the text with the audience. In Dutch.
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The Text of my Life: Alfred Schaffer
Which texts from world literature has Dutch poet Alfred Schaffer cherished as long as he lives? This most beautiful or most inspiring text can be a poem, an excerpt from a novel or a song-text. He discusses the text with the audience. In Dutch.
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The Text of my Life: Andrés Neuman
Which texts from world literature has the Argentine writer Andrés Neuman cherished as long as he lives? This most beautiful or most inspiring text can be a poem, an excerpt from a novel or a song-text. He discusses the text with the audience. In English.
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The Text of my Life: Linda Christanty
Which texts from world literature has Linda Christanty from Indonesia cherished as long as she lives? This most beautiful or most inspiring text can be a poem, an excerpt from a novel or a song-text. She discusses the text with the audience. In English.
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The Text of my Life: Roos Pollmann
Which texts from world literature has Dutch writer and actress Roos Pollman cherished as long as she lives? This most beautiful or most inspiring text can be a poem, an excerpt from a novel or a song-text. She discusses the text with the audience. In Dutch.
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Alberto Manguel: A Life of Reading
With: Alberto Manguel, Wim Brands
Argentina-born writer and world citizen Alberto Manguel counts as a passionate reader, who manages to convey his love for the written word with contagious enthusiasm. Writing is seduction, writing is an act of resistance, writing is the moment in which the author takes the initiative to enter into an intimate conversation with the reader. An act which is 6,000 years old already. Manguel possesses encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of the book. Which books have changed his life? And whence the urge to elaborate on his passion for the book so meticulously? Wim Brands (Dutch television show 'Boeken') in a tête-à-tête with the writer about his work and passion for literature. In English.
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Wim Brands: The text of my life
For one night Manon Uphoff and Aleid Truijens are hosts in the Greenhouse. In this glass house just outside the theatre they receive a series of writers who will tell you what the most important text in their lives is: a poem, or a fragment from a novel they has stayed with them throughout their lives. First guest: Wim Brands. He not only hosts the Sunday morning tv programme Brands met Boeken (Brands with Books), but he's also a poet. And tonight he is the devotee. Who talks with you about why an Ezra Pound poem is so important to him. In Dutch.
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Lying the Truth
The world famous Polish writer and journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski (1932-2007) reported numerous historical events in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with a great deal of attention to human detail. The work of writers like Lieve Joris and Geert Mak carries traces of his influence. Artur Domosławski wrote a controversial biography. Wim Brands (VPRO Boeken) talks to Artur Domoslawski, Joris van Casteren (Lelystad, The Bride's Sister) and Frank Westerman (Animal, Upper Animal, Ararat) on the slippery slopes of journalism and literature. Are writers allowed to lie the truth? In English.
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Lust and Colour
What about sexual relationships between white and black in post-apartheid South Africa? Do women in Brazil, which swelters with eroticism, move as freely as it seems? Dutch men, fantasising about black women - and the other way round. Kopano Matlwa, Edney Silvestre and Robert Vuijsje talk about the clichés surrounding sex in multicultural societies. Host: Wim Brands. In English.
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Rules or Confusion?
'The message is that you need borders and restrictions the experience freedom'. These are words of Jonathan Safran Foer (US) in a recent interview in a Dutch weekly. Foer, who opens the evening on rules and disorder, is like no other able to bring a story into existence from seemingly unrelated fragments. How does he do that? Is writing for him a way to create order in today's chaotic reality? What are his views on the idea that a writer should confuse the reader? Is this a misunderstanding from the past century that should be disposed of as soon as possible? Journalist Wim Brands talks to Foer about chaos and rules and about the social role that literature can play. Foers latest book, Eating Animals, on vegetarianism, suggests that Foer sees an important role for himself in this respect. In English
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Big Brother visiting
Christine Otten and Antjie Krog had disorder literally hovering on their doorstep. They discovered that independently of each other they had written books with an almost identical scene, a police raid on their homes. Both raids took place on wrongful suspicions of terrorist or terrorism related practices in the 1990s. The affair in Otten's novel goes back to a terrorist action by RARA in the Netherlands; in Krog's nonfiction book it's about an ANC murder in South Africa. In "Big Brother Visiting", Wim Brands asks both writers to compare their books and place them in time. Is it coincidental that they both write on how the personal life of their characters, and thereby there own freedom, is violated? Is it a coincidence that they write about these matters after 9/11?
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Decisive rules
Whether literature offers solace or confusion, whether it shows the way or disorders, every writer must have been moved in the course of his or her life by a passage, a line, an image or a poem which gave direction to his or her life. Was it a boys' book? A text on a tile? A column? Or rather that highly valued, often quoted passage from world literature? Jonathan Safran Foer, Tash Aw, Ramsey Nasr, Joke van Leeuwen and Petina Gappah read those passages that changed their lives for good, and reveal what happened to them when they read those lines for the first time. The programme starts with a reading from his work by the Iranian author Shahriar Mandanipour.
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Wintercafé 1: Arthur Japin
'Listen, drink a glass and feel how warm a winternight can be in the Wintercafé'. And it sure got very warm at the Wintercafé! With readings, short interviews and music by born improviser Behsat Üvez. On Saturday night hosts were Neske Beks and Wim Brands. The Wintercafé was graced with the internationally acclaimed singer and multi-instrumentalist Behsat Üvez.
The café opened with a brandnew story by writer Arthur Japin. Sympathize with the Ghanaian boy Kwaku, who yearns for the real life somewhere away from his own shabby neighbourhood. The programme was realized in cooperation with cultural institute DeBuren from Brussels, whom recorded Japins story as a 'radiobook' and broadcasts it worldwide. In Dutch.
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Wintercafé 4 The folds of language
In The Folds of Language Selim Temo (Kurdish), Kamran Nazirli (Azerbaijani) and Gündüz Vassaf (Turkey) read and talked about their daily struggle not to have their language kidnapped by politics or taboo. Turkish/Dutch/English.
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Wintercafé 2: Pupils & Hélène Gelèns on revelations
As on Friday night, pupils from local secondary schools showed their poetic disposition and were reading their work on the topic of revelations. Poet Hélène Gelèns also read from her work.
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Wintercafé 3 Tip Marugg
A 'pre-read' at Winternachten round writer Tip Marugg (1923-2006). Journalist Petra Possel read from No-one Is an Island, in which she defies the myth of Marugg as a hermit. Poet Carel de Haseth read newly discovered poems, included in the collected works Heaven is Short-lived. The book and the collected works (edited by Aart Broek and Wim Rutgers) was published on 29 January.
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VPRO De Avonden - live from Winternachten
In the second hour of this live broadcast from Winternachten, Wim Brands and Roel Bentz van den Berg present the Dutch poet Alfred Schaffer, Erich Zielinski from Curaçao who made his debut later in life, the South African poet Diana Ferrus and the Dutch writer Thomas Verbogt. Zielinski wil talk about his much praised De Engelenbron (The Angels well), Ferrus will recite some of her Afrikaans poetry, and Alfred Schaffer, who only yesterday re-emigrated from South Africa, will recite some of his poems. De Avonden (The Evenings) is an informative cultural radio programme from the VPRO. It can be listened to on weekdays between 21.00 to 23.00 on 747AM.
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Turkey - the Netherlands - live on VPRO radio De Avonden
How does a mixed or shared identity influence authorship? How does the Turkish culture openly reveal itself in Europe? Panel chairman Wim Brands will put these and other questions to three Turkish-Dutch writers: the newcomer Mesut Balik, thriller writer Sadik Yemni and writer Sevtap Baycili. Discussion and recitation from Turkish Netherland in a live radio broadcast from VPRO's De Avonden.
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The Visual Poem
In a time when the image culture becomes more and more invasive, the visual poem has fallen out of favour. Five poets will make an attempt to bring this tradition back to life: Wim Brands, Def. P, Hagar Peeters, Alfred Schaffer and Simon Vinkenoog. At Winternachten's request each one of them chose a recent newspaper picture and wrote a poem for this. We see the pictures and hear the poems read by the poets. The poets will take part in a discussion during the evening, chaired by Cox Habbema.
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Poetry programme: Dirty Harry and the police dog
Do you feel lucky, punk? These famous words immediately bring an image to mind. Onno Kosters, who made his debut in 2004, turns these words into a poem. Poems inspired by photo's, tv images or comic books: Menno Wigman wrote poems inspired by old police photo's, Wim Brands wrote a poem on Tintin and Albertina Soepboer transformed her landscape photo's into poems. The poets will recite some of their work and will reveil their sources of inspiration.
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VPRO - De Avonden, live radio from Winternachten
In the second hour of the live radio broadcast of VPRO'S De Avonden, presentator Wim Brands talks with amongst others the writers Antjie Krog, Wim Westerman and Henk van Woerden. The new book by Antjie Krog, Liederen van de Blauwkraanvogel (Songs of the Blue Crane), (published by Podium and Novib), will be presented during the programme.
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VPRO De Avonden: The Seers - visions in poems
Four poets translated especially for Winternachtentheir visions into poetry. These are: the young performing poet Tjitske Janse, poet and performer Ramona Maranis, Mustafa Stitou and Erik Menkveld. Presentator Wim Brands talks during the festival with these four poets in a live radio broadcast from the VPRO De Avonden .
