Richard Minne, Poetry's Freedom Fighter

A lot of poets and critics rate Richard Minne among the greatest Flemish poets of the twentieth century. But his work is no longer in print, and today he has become something of a cult poet. Sometimes his lines surface as protective incantations in select gatherings. Among the public at large he is little known. His poems are ‘contrary', with an un- or even anti-poetic quality to them, a tough shell for the surprised reader to bite into. He had the weaknesses of a tragic Keatsian figure: a sickly, impractical, easily defeated loner who blossomed briefly, dazzlingly, as a naturally talented poet. With eight poems.