Paul Bogaert Biography
Paul Bogaert’s debut collection of poems, WELCOME HYGIENE, was published in 1996. It features verses full of bizarre logic and a carefully measured mixture of styles and linguistic registers. His restless first person narrator is plagued with over-awareness; the way he analyses himself and others creates an alienating effect.
The same rousing mental and physical sensations surface in his second volume Circulaire systemen (Circular systems, 2002). In this collection Bogaert examines his fascination for all things that rotate. A closed, circular system generates security, but also discomfort. In an aloof, pseudo-scientific tone he creates poetic language machines, in which the ordinary is contrasted with the systematic.
One takes a quantity of details
as if preparing for an operation.
At once the slaves of eloquence rivet themselves
together. A shiver makes ready.
...
It's the jerky wheeze from the one who pants
makes him/her pant like that. The lower lip
curls to what a cerebral lobe
full of echoes in captivity dictates.
...
One stands at a lock
that guarantees mustiness.
Then one instinctively finds out the trick:
one tightens certain muscles, betrays
...
An eight-armed carrier holder stretched so tight
that due to hooks and tension
it is hazardous to bring your eyes closer
than you need to see it: this is the image
...
What you said was undiluted.
And it proved effective too:
I can't see a thing. My head is clean
now and white. It's done.
...
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