‘It is freedom that comes with age’: Securing Sustainable Writing Practices

The superordinate theme Securing Sustainable Writing Practices includes all elements related to the question of how these older authors comprehend the way in which they proceed with their writing projects. The first subordinate theme, ‘maintaining continuity in approach’, entails different aspects of writing procedures that turn out to be stable over the years. These aspects can include the place where and the moment when an author prefers to write. Crebolder's ‘writing mood’, for instance, occurs ‘in the evenings, when it is silent in and around the house’ and when she has ample opportunity to withdraw to her writing desk. For other writers, continuity is rather found in the preference for a particular literary form or theme. Daey Ouwens prefers prose poems, and her work originates from the figure of the grandmother. Budé favours serial poetry because it enables him ‘to tell stories in addition to conveying emotions' within the lyrical genre. Looking back at his work, he defines ‘death and journey’ (including life as journey and imaginary journeys) as recurrent themes in his poetry. The interviewees also mention mortality and transience as prominent in their work from its very beginning – an aspect I will return to in the Writing as Art of Living section. Furthermore, the source of inspiration, such as fine art, literary quotes, memories and names, remains the same over the years for some writers. Kusters mentions how a word like the technical film term ‘Sprechhund’ can set his imagination off. Budé enjoys crossovers between poetry and visual arts. For instance, the discovery of a photograph in a Dutch newspaper, accompanying a piece on one of the poorest counties in the United States of America, resulted in his Nebraska series. The image served as the catalyst for him ‘to imagine how the innkeeper in the photograph lives with his wife and children’. He then paired this picture with one of his most painful childhood memories – the moment when a tree cut by a father accidentally killed his little daughter who passed on her bike. Herberghs always takes refuge in nature. Promenades through the South Limburgian landscape form the basis of his poetry. He self-identifies as ‘an outdoor poet’ and ‘a poet of nature, meadows and cows'.

The second subordinate theme denotes ‘drawing on the wealth of experience’ that comes with age. Crebolder describes ageing as ‘something cumulative that brings more and more new perspectives' – she is convinced that her writing may benefit from it. I interviewed Crebolder in January 2015, right after the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. An article in a Dutch newspaper had drawn Crebolder's attention to the fact that the cartoonists of the French satirical paper were older men. This led her to conclude that they were capable of making such great drawings because they were ‘dyed in the wool’ and ‘understood what life is all about’. In Crebolder's view, it would be ‘an oversight’ not to value older people's accumulation of experiences. Kusters affirms that ‘the life you live determines the poetry you write – and, vice versa, creative writing teaches you how to look at the world in a different way’. That is why, for example, the wooden climbing park on the slagheap of the former mine Wilhelmina in Kerkrade suddenly appeared to him as the mine turned inside out, as ‘a large void propped up with poles'. Likewise, Budé now experiences the shop window of his parents' grocery store as ‘a window to the world’ that initiated him, as a young boy, into its wonders. Yet, the wealth of experience as a writer's toolkit is not to be confused with wisdom. Each interviewee opposed the positioning of wise old (wo)man. Daey Ouwens, for instance, contends, ‘one expects that wisdom comes with age, maybe you could call it wisdom, but I feel far from wise … and I haven't made much headway, I believe’. In a similar vein, Herberghs suggests that a ‘ten-year-old child already may know more than a 20-year-old’. For Daey Ouwens, ageing means that ‘you are mastering the words to express what you intuitively knew as a child’. Instead of wisdom, she says, ‘it is freedom that comes with age’.

This notion of freedom is particularly characteristic of the third subordinate theme, ‘emancipating from earlier literary conceptions', especially in relation to poetic form. Kusters explains that, technically, his earlier work built on ‘his readings of poetry by Gerrit Kouwenaar’, a prominent member of the Dutch poetry group known as De vijftigers (a Dutch term literally referring to the people from the 1950s). From Kouwenaar, Kusters borrowed the idea that ‘poetry should be objectifying and its affect only revealed through the practice of reading’. He describes this poetics with metaphors such as ‘chilled’ and ‘fossil’. In the early 1980s, however, Kusters felt that he, as a creative writer, was approaching a standstill in that ‘cold and coolness', which prompted him to take a new literary direction. Through writing children's poems and rhyming poems with musical rhythms, he was able to free himself from the ideal of ‘scant elliptical poetry’. In Kusters' experience, growing older makes a writer more adventurous. He also increasingly feels the need to establish contact with his readers rather than operating from the philosophy of ‘art for art's sake’. Budé, too, explains that, at the beginning of his career, he believed that poetry should be something ‘exalted, extraordinary, and almost otherworldly, averse of anecdotes'. For this reason, he replaced ‘ordinary speech with more abstract language’. Over the years, though, Budé distanced himself from this earlier literary conception and his work developed more into ‘parlando-like poetry’. Crebolder, meanwhile, describes her early work as ‘a lyrical account of a variety of things'. In her latest poetry volumes, though, she focused on what she really wanted to say. In order to get her message across, she left ‘the lyrical singing, the sing song which sealed her voice’ behind. The idea of having found the freedom and courage to make one's voice heard recurs in the interview with the other female interviewee, Daey Ouwens. Now in her seventies, Daey Ouwens has made peace with the fact that the prose poem is her primary mode of expression. Yet, she does not experience this form as ‘a straitjacket’ anymore because she no longer feels obliged to follow its rules rigidly.

The fourth subordinate theme covers ‘reinventing oneself as artist’. The motivation behind the process of continuous self-reinvention is to prevent the writer from becoming one's own epigone. Although artists' latest work can be their finest, Kusters explains that sometimes the opposite may be the case. Pierre Kemp, a renowned Limburgian writer from the previous generation about whom Kusters wrote a biography, turned into ‘his own imitator’, according to Kusters. Even the great Kouwenaar assessed his own late writings as a ‘poor version of his earlier work’, and, therefore, stopped writing. Daey Ouwens admires authors who quit writing because ‘they have nothing genuine left to say’. The moment creative writing becomes a routine, it loses its eloquence and rationale. Thus, for each new project, Daey Ouwens self-investigates the truthfulness of her motivation and only continues if her writing is ‘justified’. The interviewees talk about endless literary self-development as an internal drive entwined with the notion of risk taking; for instance, by experimenting with literary techniques or genres that they have never tried before. Crebolder hopes she will find ‘new ideas that will result in a new poetry volume or a series of volumes' like her latest trilogy, which she regards her finest. Budé is experimenting with the libretto for an opera on the river Meuse. He has never taken on an assignment like this before, and bursts with inspiration. Daey Ouwens is translating poetry with another Dutch writer, a collaboration that serves as ‘inspiration for new poems'. Kusters aspires to write a biography on a photographer, which will contain ‘more fictional elements than his previous biographies and visual material’. All writers are excited about their new projects and speculate on whether they will be able to bring them to a good end. Still, the urge to reinvent oneself does not coincide with the desire for originality. On the contrary, the authors understand their desire to self-regenerate in terms of achieving one's full potential. As Kusters counsels, ‘If all goes well, originality is the end product of your development rather than the origin of your writing’. Throughout his career, he has commented on the work of aspirant writers seeking his advice on the literary quality of their poems, and found a discrepancy between ‘the quest of poets for originality and their products that often looked alike’. On this subject, Herberghs laconically declares to find the novel in nature; ‘the wind, the paths and the trees are always new’. In his experience as a ‘poet of nature’, walking turns into writing.

‘At least you did something that made sense to you’: Negotiating the Literary Field

The superordinate theme of Negotiating the Literary Field points to the ways in which writers experience and manoeuvre among the mores characteristic of the Dutch literary world in which they operate. The concept of ‘the literary field’ is a familiar contribution of the sociologist Bourdieu (Reference Bourdieu1992) to the field of literary studies, and, therefore, is included as denominator of this superordinate theme. The first subordinate theme within it concerns ‘challenges regarding keeping or finding a publisher’ once you get older. There is unanimity about the fact that it is harder for older writers to stay with a renowned publisher or to find a new established publisher with which to collaborate. Crebolder points at the importance of getting support from ‘a nationally recognised publisher that has the capacity to launch one's work widely’. After ‘a brief but frustrating period in which she did not have a publisher’, she now feels ‘satisfied to have accomplished having published her latest volumes with publishing house Nieuw Amsterdam’. Kusters is proud that, for a long time, he was part of Querido's ‘gallery’, together with famous poets such as Gerrit Achterberg and Kouwenaar. Budé mentions that Kusters now collaborates with a small new publishing house in Amsterdam, called Koppernik – evidence towards Budé’s conviction that older writers ‘struggle to sustain the support of their publishing houses'. Those who have managed to stay with the same publisher throughout their career are very grateful for the publisher's commitment and confidence in their work. Budé, who characterises himself as a ‘copious writer’, feels gratitude for the persistence of Meulenhoff in publishing his ‘heavy volumes of serial poetry’. Daey Ouwens collaborates with Wereldbibliotheek and realises that she is blessed to have a publishing house that feels like taking ‘a warm bath’. As a side note though, the interviewees remark that it is more challenging for poets than prose writers to get their work out today. Herberghs further explains that we ‘live in the age of the novel, especially crime fiction’, and he speculates that ‘there might be more people who write than read poetry’. Budé, though, foresees ‘a careful revival of poetry’. In his opinion, the expected breakthrough of slam poetry did not come. Instead, ‘young women poets who adopt a more classical approach stand out’ to his great satisfaction.

The second subordinate theme encompasses ‘developing self-acceptance and relativising literary awards'. All interviews contain self-relativising moments in which the writers make a sensible effort to put their authorship into perspective. Budé asserts:

While Daey Ouwens acknowledges:

Kusters, Budé and Crebolder disclose that well-meaning supporters feel that they should have received literary awards that have national appeal by now, such as the VSB Poetry Award that Daey Ouwens was nominated for some years ago. In a common perception among literary professionals, other forms of recognition such as being knighted in the Order of Orange Nassau, distinguished as Limburger of merit or having received a regional cultural prize – all examples of distinctions that these authors have received – do not seem to count. Kusters, Budé and Crebolder have come to terms with this. Budé suggests that an important award even might have ‘silenced his poetic voice’. On the other hand, Kusters and Crebolder admit to daydreaming of a particular award but without obsessing over it. Kusters reminisces over Pierre Kemp, who received the Constantijn Huygens prize when he was almost 70 years old; he does not use this memory to compare himself with Kemp, but more as ‘a gentle reminder of the relativity of the mechanics of the literary field’. Similarly, Crebolder acknowledges her ‘cautious desire to win the Anna Bijns award’ (the only national prize exclusively for women writers and, until recently, a lifetime achievement award):

Budé and Herberghs have committed themselves to stimulating the recognition of other poets by either establishing a literary prize in their name or by acting in the capacity of adviser when new literary and cultural awards are founded.

The third subordinate theme concerns ‘handling continuity of reception’. While the writers experience that their work is in constant development, literary critics seem to turn a blind eye to these changes, tending instead to stick to labels that they once introduced to interpret and assess poetry. Daey Ouwens, for instance, explains how reviewers always characterise her writings as ‘small’. Even though she understands that the word in itself has a negative connotation, she appreciates this particular label and is determined to stand for the beauty that is to be found in the ‘trivial’. Kusters describes how his academic persona predominates the reception of his work, including his poetry. To his knowledge, the expectation that ‘the perspective of readers can be transformed’ is at odds with the fact that, ‘once you have been placed in a box, you stay in that box’. Four interviewees brought up the characterisation of poetry and/or the positioning of poets as Limburgian, with Budé, Herberghs and Kusters finding the classification indicative of the position of literary critics in the centre rather than the periphery of the Dutch literary field. As such, ‘Limburgian’ says more about literary critics' attitude towards Limburgian language and culture than the nature of their work and authorship. The poets have mixed feelings about the depreciation of linguistic variation and context-related literary themes; they practise standing tall and following their own course. Daey Ouwens (born in Limburg, feeling at home in its literary scene but living outside the province) advises younger Limburgian authors ‘to just write, to continue writing’ instead of ‘indulging in feelings of being discriminated against’ because of their location. Budé takes pride in his transnational identity at the border of The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, and finds pleasure in observing the responses of passers-by to his poem written in local dialect and painted on the façade of a house on the corner (Achter de Comedie) of one of the most popular squares in Maastricht. Dutch-speaking colleagues believe he ‘corrupted himself by writing in dialect’, while local dialect speakers claim that ‘the spelling of their dialect is incorrect’ (Budé followed the latest spelling rules for the dialect of Maastricht, with which many people are unfamiliar). Budé loves this commotion around his poem, as it proves that it is able to affect people.

The fourth subordinate theme specifies ‘staying visible’ in the public sphere. For writers located in the south of The Netherlands, this implies that they have to travel to the Randstad (a megapolis consisting of the four largest Dutch cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht) to perform their work on larger literary podia. However, many factors, such as taking on teaching jobs or care-giving responsibilities, can prevent writers from doing so at different stages of their lifecourse, as several interviewees reveal. In addition, for older generations, poetry readings might not be a favoured mode of expression. Daey Ouwens is ‘startled by the demands that are placed on younger writers who have to distinguish themselves through their performance’. She criticises the fact that ‘people seem to value the instantaneousness of the live poetry reading over sustained silent reading’. One of the negative consequences of the trend for poetry on stage is, she observes, that ‘poetry is well attended but poorly sold’. Although Daey Ouwens ‘hates’ reading her work out loud, she did present her latest volume with younger women writers on the podium of De Nieuwe Liefde in Amsterdam. Yet, she avoids attending large literary events like the Boekenbal (book ball) because she experiences them as ‘such a terror’. Meanwhile, Crebolder admits to making a conscious effort to maintain her visibility in the Dutch literary scene even when this is ‘at the expense of the surplus energy required to write in later life’. She explains that it is comfortable to indulge in the idea of being free not to take on certain self-promotional activities anymore – yet, she makes an effort to present herself to the audience because ‘no one else will safeguard your public visibility’. Through having organised the poetry festival in Landgraaf as well as running the Literary Café in Venlo for years, Crebolder managed to stay in close contact with the centre of the Dutch literary field from Limburg. By contrast, Herberghs has always tried to avoid literary events and remains faithful to his more romantic view of the secluded poet.

‘To imagine the unthinkable’: Writing as Art of Living

The superordinate theme of Writing as Art of Living refers to how the interviewees understand the connection between creative writing and how one lives and ages. The first subordinate theme of it concerns ‘not feeling old(er)’. Herberghs, already in his nineties, talks about old age as if it does not affect him. He describes ageing as ‘a lengthy issue’, something one does year in, year out from birth onwards. The poet envisions that ‘people all grow older together and therefore no one is left behind’. Kusters does not recognise himself in the portrayal of an older writer by a younger colleague in the press, steering towards a public generational conflict. Daey Ouwens discloses that old age ‘was always something for later’ and, even though ‘it is later now’, she still ‘does not feel like it’. To her, growing older ‘doesn't mean anything in itself … Age is an abstract number that one does not live by’. Also, physically, it has no implications. Instead, it is the notion of finitude when family members or friends get age-related diseases and pass away that disrupts the experience of not feeling older. Budé affirms that ‘saying final goodbyes to friends puts a great strain on me’. He chooses not to burden his children with his grievances, as this consequence of growing older is ‘unimaginable’ to the young. Kusters explains that the word ‘old’ is still primarily connected with the concepts of decline and loss. He elaborates on the Western anti-ageing ideology that ‘promotes agelessness' as a state of being to which humankind can aspire. In his opinion, this ideology still builds on ‘the archaic layer of “older” as synonymous with “weak”, “sick” and “queasy”’. One learns the negative connotations of growing older from birth onwards, and that is why one does not identify with it in later life. With embarrassment, Daey Ouwens recalls how she ‘simultaneously felt love and disgust’ for her grandmother, disgust for ‘such an old old face, such smell an old smell’. Crebolder explains how she ‘got over the idea that getting older is really awful’, and argues that it is a writer's privilege to reinvent the ageing process itself:

From this quote it follows that Crebolder credits the figure of the writer with a unique creative agency to reinvent discourses of ageing, which may have immediate positive material effects. Also on a more positive note, Daey Ouwens emphasises that, in her experience, ‘personhood beats age when making friends'. She was 46 years old when she met Herberghs, who then was in his sixties. The age difference did not prevent them from recognising each other as kindred souls. She experiences a similar affinity with the poet Eva Cox, who, in terms of their respective ages, could be her daughter.

The second subordinate theme, ‘writing as good living’, indicates that writing is associated with living well throughout one's lifecourse. Herberghs describes his existence as ‘a life in words, written words’. To quit writing is unimaginable because it would imply the end of a good and meaningful life. Likewise, Budé admits that ‘he is not himself’ when he is ill and incapable of writing. He understands writing as ‘continuous reflection, continuous exploration, continuous memory browsing, continuous observation, continuous storing of ideas’ that safeguard ‘the suppleness of one's mind’. Daey Ouwens remembers, from her childhood, how writing her first essays at school filled her with joy. She finds it difficult to imagine where she might find ‘such fulfilment and intensity’ if she had to fill her days with ‘all kinds of clubs, philosophy clubs, cultural clubs, museum clubs, etc.’ as many older people do. Crebolder, too, understands writing as ‘the only gratifying way of being’ and situates its origin in her childhood, even before she could write. Lying alone in her parents' bed as a two-and-a-half-year-old girl, she witnessed the bees humming around the pear tree, which prompted her to make a short rhyming verse in her head. She ran downstairs to recite it to her mother, who loved it. Over the years, the driving force behind Crebolder's poetry has ‘only grown stronger’. Now that she is in her seventies, she feels ‘an urgency to speak the unspoken words'. Otherwise, she argues, ‘it might take years again before one of the younger poets arrives at the point where they have learned through experiences and found the courage to put them forward unscrupulously’. One of Crebolder's self-termed ‘unspoken’ topics is the parallel between her grandmother, who died in childbirth, and her own difficult experience of giving birth:

Crebolder explains that, now that she is older, she takes inspiration from her lived experiences to the fullest in her creative writing without much anticipation of reader responses. Kusters also recognises the ‘sense of urgency’ in everything that he is currently undertaking as a writer.

The third subordinate theme is ‘writing to recreate’. As mentioned in the section discussing Securing Sustainable Writing Practices, mortality and transiency have been major sources of inspiration throughout these writers' careers. They have resorted to creative writing not as a means to archive and restore people, things or events, but to provide them with new meanings and, in doing so, bring them to the present. Kusters' first poetry volume Een oor aan de grond (An Ear to the Ground) was prompted by the illness and death of his father and set against the disappearance of the oldest mining town in The Netherlands. Creative writing helped the poet ‘to approach the changing world around me with wonder and acceptance’. In his latest volume, Hohner (a brand of mouth organ), Kusters discovered that, while writing about his brother who had recently passed away, suddenly another brother, his parents' first child, who died a few months after his birth, appeared through Kusters' poetic voice. In his understanding, ‘poetry does not serve to document the past but to rework it’. The figure of a deceased sibling also featured in the interview with Budé. As a young boy, he discovered a photograph of his older sister who only lived for a day. This was one of the tragic events that Budé witnessed shaping his parents' lives. The poet says that he ‘increasingly investigates what lies beyond death’ through his poetry. For example, he ‘contemplates the afterlife’ in a poem about the Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader who disappeared when he tried to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a small sailing boat in 1976. Budé imagines him ‘walking over the bottom of the sea, guided by the light of the sun’. Writing serves as a way ‘to imagine the unthinkable’. Hence, his latest collection of poetry is titled Achter het verdwijnpunt (Behind the Vanishing Point). Daey Ouwens continues to write ‘to do justice’ to her late grandmother, who was brought from a small rural village in the south of Limburg to Brussels by her godmother where she got a formal education and worked as a governess. When Daey Ouwens was a young girl, the grandmother lived with her and was the person to whom she ‘could turn to find empathy and affection’. The poet experiences a strong sense of continuity between herself and the grandmother ‘who had nowhere to go with her talents'. Her writing is a permanent tribute to this woman of the past: ‘I want to say: “I have understood and seen you.”’ Indeed, her grandmother has become ‘a metaphor for women in general, a window through which to reflect on the meaning of life’. In the volume De achterkant (The Reverse), Daey Ouwens' late husband joins the figure of the grandmother because ‘he too was misunderstood by his environment’ – a situation Daey Ouwens aspires to rectify through her poems. Correspondingly, Crebolder recalls that one of her first poems at primary school attempted to ‘give voice to the lamentation following the death of the mother of a neighbour’. Even Herberghs, as a witness of nature, recreates ‘the landscape of death, the secret of the valley’ in his poetry.

The final subordinate theme considers ‘confronting cognitive decline’. Budé does not wish upon the people surrounding him to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Crebolder declares that she would take ‘a very tasty drink’ in order ‘to avoid becoming a burden on my family’. While she acknowledges that some people experience that dementia brings ‘many good things’, she does not want to go through the first stage of the disease when one knows what is happening but with no prospect of improvement. In her opinion, there would be ‘too much weight on society’ if we all were diagnosed with dementia. Alternatively, Kusters has ‘become less fearful’ of this diagnosis since he witnessed the resilience of the person behind the disease first-hand. When his mother stayed in nursing home Klevarie in Maastricht, he visited the psychogeriatric ward often and made contact with her co-residents, and consequently could ‘never make radical statements about the so-called “unworthy” lives of people with dementia’ and feels ‘uncomfortable with the direction the debate on euthanasia and dementia is currently taking in The Netherlands'. Daey Ouwens suggests that ‘you may continue writing if your mind fails’, and that it could result in ‘very beautiful poetry – like Dada stuff’. Similarly, Herberghs does not pit dementia against creative writing, and even wonders if the disease might be ‘a prerequisite for excellent writing’. ‘There must be many poets with dementia’, he ponders. It is Herberghs' wife Cis who introduces the issue of his memory loss during the interview, while the poet drops the ‘d’ word without identifying with it. Experiencing memory loss has certainly not prevented Herberghs from writing and publishing: his latest poetry collection came out in 2014 and, while he confessed to considering finalising his oeuvre, he simultaneously pointed to a heap of poems on the table on which he is currently working. When Herberghs talks about personal experiences of illness and disability that have deeply impacted his life, he does not mention his current condition of increasing frailty, but refers back to the seven years he spent at a sanatorium in young adulthood.