Benno Barnard during the recording session
Dutch Benno Barnard’s special recording session at the Polish Radio on March 22nd, 2011 launched the Czesław Miłosz audiobooks project. The Dutch version of the Miłosz audiobook was released in June as a free attachment to the reissued anthology "Gedichten", translated by Gerard Rasch
The audiobook endeavour forms part of the Cultural Programme of the Polish Presidency of the EU, as well as a special programme commemorating the hundredth year since the Polish poet's birth. The publications engage various actors and writers who lend their voices for recordings of different selections of Miłosz’s poems in each country of publication. The graphic design and overall concept remains the same: The audio books, produced by the pan-European Polish Institutes, are an opportunity for European readers to acquaint themselves with the works of the Polish laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
For the Dutch edition of the Czesław Miłosz audiobook, the selection of works was chosen by Alexandre Popowicz of the Polish Institute in Brussels, together with the Dutch Atlas Publishing House. Among the pieces recorded by Barnard are "Campo di fiori","A Song on the End of the World", "You Who Wronged"and "Mittelbergheim".
Born in 1954, Benno Barnard is a Dutch poet, writer, playwright and journalist, and a winner of numerous awards. In 2006, he published "Poets of the Occident", a history of the 20th century written through the prism of the lives and works of ten European poets. In his book Barnard wrote about Czesław Miłosz, alongside Celan, Auden, Brodski and others. It was thanks to Benno Banard that the Polish writer became significant and renown in the Netherlands. Apart from "Poets of the Occident", he also published texts on Miłosz in a major Dutch daily, NRC/Handelsblad as well as the Flemmish De Morgen.
The participation of Atlas Publishing House in annual Book Fair in Antwerp on the 5th of November, 2011 will ensure further promotion of the Czesław Miłosz audiobook.
Full list of Czesław Miłosz's poems on the Dutch audiobook:
“Ontmoeting”
“Campo dei Fiori”
“Liedje over het wereldeinde”
“Jij die onrecht hebt gedaan”
“Mittelbergheim”
“Ik slaap veel en lees Thomas van Aquino”
“Op trompetten en een citer” (fragment)
“Een geschenk”
“Seizoen”
“Een stippeltjesjurk”
“Eerlijke bescrhijving van mijzelf met een glas whisky op het vliegveld van, bijvoorbeeld, Minneapolis”
“Tja, aan de dood ontkom je niet”
“De Mooie Dame”
“Onaangepast”
The Dutch edition of Czesław Miłosz's audiobook was made possible thanks to the help and cooperation with the Polish Institute in Brussels.
Date: Distribution from the 1st of June, 2011
Location: Nationwide in Belgium, through the Gedichten anthology
Organised by: Polish Institute in Brussels, boek.be and Adam Mickiewicz Institute
Project cofinanced by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
Source: Adam Mickiewicz Institute
Czesław Miłosz is a Flagship Project of the Cultural Programme of the Polish Presidency. For more information on the project, see: Czesław Miłosz