As a young woman, Lucienne Stassaert (1936) was a promising concert pianist, but quite quickly came to prefer creative to interpretative artistry, exchanging music for literature and painting. She made her debut as a writer in 1964, with the poetic prose book Verhalen van de jonkvrouw met de spade (Tales of the Lady with the Spade). As well as prose, Stassaert also wrote radio plays and stage plays, but above all made a name for herself as a poet. In her work, all kinds of interconnected tensions and oppositions find expression: life and destruction, man and woman, loss and fulfilment, love and death.
an ode to Sylvia Plath
Judging by the silence
your children toss and turn in dreams
that no father or mother knows.
...
Pushed out with worn-out furniture
her sprung insides show
the joys and woes of an old mattress.
The kapok suddenly releases secrets
...
To get used
to the carcass
before the death sigh
fills you out -
...