Biographical Notes on the Poets

BERTUS AAFJES is one of the most gifted younger Dutch poets. Born in Amsterdam in 1914, he studied archeology for a year in Rome and has also been a newspaperman. JACOB VAN HATTUM is an elementary-sehool teacher in Amsterdam. Aside from his poetry, he has written some fairy tales and short stories.

EDUARD HOORNIK, now in his early forties and a wellknown poet in Holland, has at various times been a newspaperman and editor, and, after the war, Director of the Dutch-Indonesia Information Service.

MARTINUS NIJHOFF, who died last year, was a major figure in Dutch letters. For two decades editor of De Gids, a leading journal of ideas, he wrote critical essays and poetry which are the expression of a complex, richly gifted personality.

ERIC VAN DER STEEN is the pseudonym of D. Zijlstra, a newspaperman in Amsterdam who has published poetry and short stories.

P. G. BUCKINX, now a resident of Brussels, was born in Kortessem in 1903. He is the recipient of several Flemish literary prizes.

THÉO LÉGER, born in Brussels in 1912, published his first book of poetry in 1937, and today is considered one of the outstanding Belgian poets writing in French. MARCEL THIRY, a native of Charleroi, is in the top rank of Belgian poets. In 1927. at the age of thirty, he received the Prix Verhaeren. At present he lives in Liège.