The Inside of a Stone

After first making her mark as a compelling performer, Belgian poet Charlotte Van den Broeck was acclaimed as one of Europe’s most innovative and original new voices in poetry. Her first two collections, Chameleon and Nachtroer, were published together in David Colmer’s English translation by Bloodaxe in 2020.

Whereas those earlier books often return to childhood and youth in urban and European landscapes, the key sequence of The Inside of a Stone concentrates on desert landscapes and womanhood – and the emotional resonance between the two – while reconceptualising their metaphorical relationship. With close observation and striking images she engages with the arid, eroded landscape. In other poems she considers sexual violence while watching a pair of mating turtles, imagines an alternative emotional life for Ilsebill, the fisherman’s wife from the Grimm fairytale, and explores medieval poet Hildegard of Bingen’s magical healing.

From the reviews in Belgium and The Netherlands of The Inside of a Stone:

‘In lines that are graceful yet urgent, Charlotte Van den Broeck reveals the wounds in landscapes, animals and people, women.’ – Trouw

‘Charlotte Van den Broeck captures intense experiences in living language.’ – Trouw

‘Charlotte Van den Broeck dismantles herself and the world.’ – Volkskrant

‘With this collection, Charlotte Van den Broeck shows the limitations of the female image and breaks through them with her poems.’ – NRC

From the reviews of Chameleon | Nachtroer:

‘This joint volume translation introduces the young Belgian poet to English-language audiences with the rich tonal and emotional range that the breadth of two collections allow for. Van den Broeck’s poems stretch from playfulness to introspective and melancholy moods, and her uncanny imagination characterises every single one of her poems. Chameleon | Nachtroer marks the development of a strange and distinctive voice, which comes through powerfully in David Colmer’s astute translation.’ – Helena Fornells, Asymptote Journal

‘Reading Charlotte Van den Broeck’s recent Bloodaxe collection makes it clear to the reader exactly why she is acclaimed as one of Europe’s most innovative and original new voices in poetry.’ – Lizzie Husum, DURA (Dundee University Review of the Arts), on Chameleon | Nachtroer

‘This poetry parades like the chameleon in various appearances…in streaming language and unlikely, striking images.’ – Humo, on Chameleon

‘This is carefully accurate poetry, eloquent and adventurous, and truly authentic. That someone’s second book can be so audacious and dauntless is remarkable.’ – VSB poëzieprijs 2018 jury, on Nachtroer

Charlotte Van den Broeck was born in Turnhout, Belgium, in 1991. After studies in English and German, she took a Masters in Drama at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp. She has published three collections of poetry, Kameleon (2015), which was awarded the Herman de Coninck debut prize for poetry by a Flemish author; Nachtroer (2017), which was nominated for the VSB Poetry Prize 2018 and the Ida Gerhard Prize; and Aarduitwrijvingen (2021). The first two volumes are combined in Chameleon | Nachtroer, translated from the Dutch by David Colmer (Bloodaxe Books, 2020). David Colmer's translation of Aarduitwrijvingen will be published by Bloodaxe in 2025 under the title The Inside of a Stone. Her poetry has also been translated into German, Spanish, French, Serbian and Arabic. In 2016 she opened the Frankfurt Bookfair together with Dutch poet Arnon Grunberg. In 2017 she was one of that year’s Versopolis poets, performing at several European festivals including Ledbury in Britain. In 2022 David McKay's translation of her prose book Bold Ventures: Thirteen Tales of Architectural Tragedy (Waagstukken) was published by Chatto. As well as publishing critically acclaimed books she is renowned for her distinctive performances, which differ from UK/US versions of spoken word as theatre pieces ‘searching for the speakability and experience of oral poetry’, now presented in English as well as Dutch.

David Colmer is an Australian writer and translator who lives in Amsterdam. He has won many prizes for his translations of Dutch literature, including the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (both with novelist Gerbrand Bakker), and major Australian and Dutch awards for his body of work. His translations of the poetry of Hugo Claus and Ramsey Nasr were shortlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and the Popescu Prize respectively, and his translation of a selection of Annie M.G. Schmidt’s classic children’s poetry was specially commended by the Foundation for Dutch Literature. Recent poetry translations include Paul van Ostaijen’s modernist classic Occupied City (Smoekstack, 2016), Menno Wigman’s Window-cleaner Sees Paintings (2016), Ester Naomi Perquin's Hunger in Plain View (White Pine Press, Buffalo, 2017), and Simone Atangana Bekono's How the First Sparks Became Visible (The Emma Press, 2020); two translations for Deep Vellum/Phoneme in Dallas, Mustafa Stitou's Two Half Faces (2020) and Radna Fabias' Habitus; and two collections by Cees Nooteboom from Seagull Books, Monk's Eye (2018) and Leaving (2021). He has translated three collections by Flemish poet Charlotte Van den Broeck for Bloodaxe, the first two combined in Chameleon | Nachtroer (2019), and the third, The Inside of a Stone, forthcoming in 2025.