(Amsterdam, 1954) writes poetry, essays and essayistic novels. He commenced his literary career back in the 1980Õs when he had three collections of poetry published: Een engel van Rossetti (One of RosettiÕs angels, 1981), Klein Rozendaal (1982) and Het meer in mij (The lake within me, 1986). It has been said that these collections manifest a cerebral romantic who travels between dream and reality, the past and the present, here and yonder, nature and culture. They generally consist of short, compressed texts, moulded into a perfect, regular shape and containing subtle plays with words and sounds. Over the years they tended to become more sober, which trend is compensated by imagination: `It is true, because that is what it appears like in my dreams.Õ

Nine years and two novels later, Barnard writes a different kind of poems. Obviously he has been influenced by classic English poets (such as T.S. Eliot) during his stay in the USA

The collection Tijdgenoten (Contemporaries, 1994) for example, is comprised of long, related, epic and very anecdotic poems in which centuries have been compressed into the one moment when these poems were written. `Barnard travels with us, tourists, to another time, so that we can hear, see, smell and even feel what has happened in this century. That way the events he thus describes become part of our history.Õ (Hanneke Klinkert in the Poëziekrant). Tijdgenoten marks an essential change in BarnardÕs poetry indeed. Not only are his poems lengthier, `the specific gravity of nice sounding lines has decreasedÕ - although his sound and wording remain esthetic. `The emphasis is on vulnerability rather than aesthetic shape,Õ concludes Rob Schouten in Vrij Nederland, although he adds that this process has only just begun. `His shift to longer, more telling poems is not caused by whimsical mental leaps, but it is the logic development of a poet who tries to rid himself of some rather youthful virtuosity.Õ

Benno Barnard participated in Poetry International in 1983 and in 1995.