Laure-Anne Bosselaar 11-10-1997
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Issue Date
1997-11-10
Authors
Bosselaar, Laure-Anne 19971110
Publisher
SUNY Brockport
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Abstract
Laure-Anne reads "Loving You in Flemish" (0:14) from "The Hour Between Dog and Wolf".
Stan Sanville Rubin interviews Laure-Ann Bosselaar and tells us Laure-Anne is fluent in 4 languages, received an MFA from Warren Wilson, published poetry collection in French, and worked in Belgian TV. Jumping into the conversation, Stan mentions the poem is concluded in Flemish. Laure-Anne mentions it's Antwerp Street Flemish and it's one of sixty-seven Flemish dialects. She goes on to outline how Flemish is derived from Dutch, and what the differences are among some of the Flemish dialects along with how it's derived from Dutch. They discuss identity and language and how language could create and break down barriers, both internal and external, through the tale of her multicultural and multilingual upbringing. Bosselaar speaks lovingly of learning English and being free to speak of terrible historical atrocities toward Jews in a language that didn't commit those atrocities to that extent. She spoke of all of the kindness and support she has experienced since moving to America, and with joy, says that she loves living America with all its terrible faults and all the incredible kindness she's seen. Stan shifts the conversation to Laure-Ann's early life in Belgium after World War II. She describes being raised by nuns in a convent school. She describes the cruelty of the nuns that were responsible for raising and educating the children. This occurred until she was old enough to walk to the train station for her monthly weekend visit with her parents. Laure-Anne was invited to talk about how she had found or created the ability to write about the horrors she experienced. She mentioned these memories were buried, but she was eventually able to write a novel which she promptly burned as a compulsion to remain silent, particularly about abuse, she and the other children suffered. She came to writing more openly about her experiences after encouragement from her husband and friends to go for an MFA and learn to write in English. Initially, she wrote these difficult memories in English to create distance from the past and help her become fluent English. She expressed a desire to launder the blood in her veins of Antisemitism and racism. She described the devilish creatures depicted in the summer convent school she went to that were meant to be depicted as Jews. She had never seen them before, but quickly learned what those images were meant to represent and how that permeated her daily life and perception of the world around her. She later realized the Red Cross had placed her very own classmates, who were Jewish children, in the nunneries so their families could find them after the war. She saw her classmates, and thought of the devilish images, and couldn't make sense of the association. Stan asks Laure-Ann to read "The Cellar" (24:31) from "The Hour Between Dog and Wolf". They discuss the form, Stanzaic Poetry in the French tradition, she used to write "The Cellar" and how different languages allow Lore Ann to explore different types of "music" in her writing forms. They continue on to talk about her love of languages and how she was multilingual all her life and that she really only had to learn English. Laure-Anne described how she did so from American and British musicians like the Beatles and Marvin Gaye's "I Heard it Through the Grapevine". Stan invites Laure-Anne to talk through the "Lost Souls Roaming" section of her book and what drove the imagery and the present tense presentation of these poems. Stan points out the lack of profound sadness in these poems and proceeds to unpack that with her. The conversation turns to Laure-Anne's journey to the American west and the experiences that brought her to America and the experiences that brought her into the love she feels for her new home. Laure Anne reads "Mortal Art" (45:14). Stan and Laure-Anne discuss possible future work she may do in the coming years and what helps her work or come up with new work. The conversation closes with a reading of "The Syllables of Longing" (1:00:41).
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