Lotte Claassen
On Dutch National Poetry Day, January 26, 2017, Lotte Claassen was chosen out of six candidates by jury and audience to Campus Poet 2017. She succeeds Jan Völkel, who had tried in this past year to make people enthusiastic to write poetry or at least to read poems of others.
At the beginning of the Campus Poet Election 2017 a few brief comparisons were made with the inauguration of Trump. As a joke, of course, because in both cases there is an election and transition. With Trump no place for doubt or self-reflection of course, just a cast in concrete starting point 'Fake it 'till you make it'. Very different from Lotte Claassen, who wrote the appropriate poem Imposter syndrome, in which she gave the audience an inside look into her thoughts and feelings, doubts and insecurities. But with a good share of self-reflection and self-knowledge.
In addition to the election as Campus Poet 2017, Lotte will be awarded with a subsidy of 500 euro for her efforts throughout the year 2017.
Poetry
Impostor syndrome
There's nothing I'm better at than self-doubt
but I feel like I'd be a natural at drowning to death
My brain knows perfectly how to simulate the feeling, even right now
others are smoothly sailing and I am just a mess
Campus is a set for the Truman show
and everyone else is on the joke
I make references to literature I didn't understand
this facade won't take you long to uncloak
I'll hand in all my essays
mimic what actually smart people say
Tomorrow you might be onto me
but I'll fake cleverness today
Other People’s Feelings
I could sit in Mensa and eavesdrop on people all day
maybe don't try being friends with your ex right away
he said he wasn’t sure where to go from here
as they kept moving backwards, trying to
play the parts they’d always known
together, they were frozen
in the roles they’d since outgrown
they slept on a mattress meant for one
wore shoes a size too small
their way of making up was by ignoring
they ever had a fight at all
they’d just get take-out at their old place
he’d have noodles and she’d get white rice
because sticking to a pattern
could never hurt them, right
with silence like a ghost between them
she’d look at him with distaste
at that point she was unaware
how hard he would be to erase
when they broke up, they did it mutually
it was no more than a rational choice
she wouldn't cry, she told her friends
instead she would rejoice
though she looked through his Facebook for photos
taken at new years
and sat there in his t-shirt
clutching those final souvenirs
but hey, she’s in between things now
and she could meet for coffee
she’ll move some things around
and meet him there at half three
‘being friends like this is good for us’
she reminds herself again
she just needs to get through today
keep breathing if she can
Two haikus
Next up, two haikus about being distracted by small things, mostly memories
(truthfully, the 5-7-5 set up only works if you assume 0 is read like 'oh', rather than 'zero')
haunting a campus is no fun:
hear it in the soft
hum of the airco vents in
g z 1 0 1
I remember most
clearly from that lecture the
whispers of a ghost