Eybers’s poem “Taalles” (Language Lesson) on the wall of the Anne Frank School in Leiden
An Afrikaans Poet in Amsterdam: Translating Elisabeth Eybers
February 27, 2017by Jacquelyn Pope
W
hether by personal predilection or because of powers beyond their control, poets are some of the most deliberate outsiders around, and poems written from an outsider’s perspective could hardly be called rare. Some poets, however, inhabit an “outside” position that is singularly their own. Elisabeth Eybers is one such poet. Her poems express an in-between state of being that begins in the specificity of her experience and sensibility but incorporate existential questions that human beings everywhere confront. There is tension and balance between languages, hemispheres, the self and others, inclusion and alienation; there is also a tugging between the past and present, between memory and mortality.