Marion de Vos-Hoekstra (Netherlands)Marion de Vos-Hoekstra was born in the Netherlands and is married to a career diplomat. They both served in North Yemen, Tanzania, United Kingdom, Mali, Spain, South Africa and The United States and now in the Netherlands. She trained as a teacher of French and as translator French, English and Dutch. She is also fluent in Spanish and German, plays the piano and the guitar, is amateur ornithologist and makes drawings, aquarelles and oil paintings. Nature, human nature and her nomad life are her main inspiration. She attended several poetry workshops in English among which a Masterclass in New York at Poetshouse and a course at the prestigious 92Y Institute. She is the author of five poetry collections (in English and Dutch), 4 with Demer Press, and is published in several anthologies and magazines (25) all over the world. (South Africa, Australia, UK and US)
She gave presentations at:
"Woordfees” of the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, Bloemfontein Literary Museum, South Africa, Literary Cafe, Cornelia street, Manhattan, New York US, Dutch club, New York US. Vlaanderen Huis, “De orde van de Prins“ New York US, Dutch section Columbia University New York, US, De Haagse Kunstkring, The Hague, and at the libraries of Wassenaar and Nijmegen.
ZanzibarI trace my steps back to long before the tourists came.
Balmy Trade winds brush my face.
On the horizon, Dhows fade in a hazy mirage.
The virgin whiteness of the sand blinds my eyes.
The shell cemetery is littered with pieces of Chinese pottery,
and Dutch VOC coins from ages of East Indian Trade.
In the forest, the air is saturated
with the smell of vanilla, nutmeg and cinnamon.
Red Colobus Monkeys observe my sleeping son.
His white curls fall on the shoulder
of an elegant black man with Omani features,
a Frangipani flower in his cropped hair.
His pace, almost dancing cradles the innocent.
In the slave market, a number, a price,
silent vestiges of an islands’ gruesome past.
The snake slithers from the lichen-weathered porch of the only church.
(Marion de Vos)