M. H. Benders

Who is M. H. Benders?

Martinus Hendrikus Benders is a Dutch poet who currently lives in Istanbul, Turkey. M.H. Benders was one of the first Dutch poets that worked with multimedia on the internet and exploited one of the most critical literary sites, Loewak. He won the Meervaart Price for Literature in 1994 and the Dunya Price for Literature in 2003. However, instead of collecting these prices himself he sent Dikke Dennis to read poetry pretending to be M.H.Benders. On another occasion the Dutch composer Samuel Vriezen performed pretending to be Benders with a fake moustache.

His poetry has absurdist, conceptualist and lyrical elements and seems to have little to do with his public stunts that, some argue, are mainly there because of his contempt for the Dutch world of literature, a feature he shares with Dutch poet Gerrit Komrij.

Benders published his first poetry book titled 'Karavanserai' in 2008, with Nieuw Amsterdam publishers. He got nominated for the prestigious Buddingh price for the book, but staged a Laibach-esque performance on the awards, where Bart van der Pligt read an Anti-Price poem and Samuel Vriezen wearing a fake moustache yelled the price had to be taken seriously from within the audience. Benders sang 'Lezen is Lezen' from a dark corner, to the tune of the known 'Life is Life' song of the Austrian band Opus