{"product_id":"9781784105747","title":"An English Anthology by Leonard Nolens","description":"`I was born in Belgium, I'm Belgian. \/ But Belgium was never born in me.' So writes Leonard Nolens in `Place and Date', which captures a mood of political and social disillusionment amid a generation of Dutch-speaking Belgians. And throughout this selection we encounter a poet engaged with the question of national identity.   Frequently the poet moves into that risky terrain, the firstperson plural, in which he speaks as and for a generation of Flemings, embodying an attitude towards artistic and political commitment that he considers its defining mark. `We curled up dejectedly in the spare wheel of May sixtyeight', he writes in the selection's central sequence `Breach'.   Nolens' poetry is haunted by giants of twentieth-century European lyricism, by Rilke, Val?ry, Neruda, Mandelstam and Celan, with whom he has arguably more affinity than with much poetry from the Dutch-language canon.\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56304024715637,"sku":"9781784105747","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784105747.jpg?v=1762795371","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9781784105747","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}