Als de aloë sluimert/Cucuisa cabisha - Quito Nicolaas

ALS DE ALOË SLUIMERT/CUCUISA CABISHA  

Quito Nicolaas 

BILINGUAL POEMS   

Although Quito Nicolaas does not aspires to go down in history as a poet that writes on 'politics', the echoes of political and social developments in his homeland are loud and clear in his poetry.

His poems breathe except joy over the autonomous status or the separation of Curaçao and the special relationship with the Netherlands, also closely veiled despair over the quality of the political and social policy of the successive Aruban Governments.

Fred de Haas made a thematic selection of 42 poems from 5 of Nicholas 'Papiamento poetry collections and translated them to the Dutch with the title Als de aloë sluimert. The content of the poems gives evidence that the author has followed an still follows the events on his native island.

'The special feature of this selection is that the reader comes to know something more of the history, culture and lifestyle of Caribbean people, which, although connected to the spirit of Europe, not really has a connection with the European way of thinking and feeling,' says Quito Nicolaas in the Preface.

AUTHOR
QUITO NICOLAAS departs in 1972 to Netherlands to study cultural work, political science and international law. He debuts as a poet in 1980 with the poem 'E Dia di Mañan' in Kontakto Antiyano. After his studies he returns in 1981 for some years back to Aruba (where he the political run-up to the Separate Status of Aruba are going through) to finally settle in the Netherlands in 1984. Since then he works, first especially as an essayist, later as a poet and prose writer at an extensive literary oeuvre, for the majority in Papiamento. In 2001, he is one of the initiators of the writers group Simia Literario in Amsterdam. 

Selection, introduction & translation: Fred de Haas

PRODUCT SPECIFICATION
Dutch-Papiamento | paperback | 152 pages | Uitgeverij In de Knipscheer | Haarlem | 2015