About ‘BACKLIT’ by Liz Robbins (and how this 2025 RATTLE Chapbook Prize Winner bruised a poetry hang-up of mine)

Written By Benne van der Velde

Rattle organizes the largest and most prestigious annual chapbook poetry prize there is. Period. By quite a margin, too. Submitting a manuscript comes with a yearlong subscription to the printed zine, 4 issues in total, and included with every issue is one of those winning chapbooks. 10000+ people get a copy this way. … Yeah. Madness. I’ve entered my manuscript this and last year (duh!) and as a result read through a couple of those winners. Out of genuine interest, sure, but just as much on the lookout for what made these volumes stand out to the judges to be honest? How these poets sold themselves, and their work… So, when I read that this specific poet, Liz Robbins, interviewed several sex-workers and had based the entire volume on their stories, I felt… cheated? This wasn’t fair… You can’t do that. Not unless you’ve had to… stay afloat that way yourself. Bet SHE hadn’t. You write about what YOU know. There’s unwritten rules and all? Couldn’t possibly really feel… personal, this. I started reading the first poem and must admit I gloated. Tricks. All tricks. Too… explanatory, while not really piercing skin. Got pleasantly high on being right, then wanted to perpetuate said high so I kept on reading:

Okay. … Damn. That one did hit home. Hard. How’s there no choice at all. Not really? Family, however dysfunctional, or even destructive, is everything. And we CAN trust our family to be the first to screw us up! Surely, though, they couldn’t continue to all be this good, could they? Spoiler: they don’t. Not ALL of them, but, a bit like within a family, there’s usually a dim one, or the opposite brainiac, an over-bearing presence or one that doesn’t care enough, and when you’re particularly unlucky someone that loves any excuse to ‘toughen you up’? Usually this occurs under the guise of love, but sometimes not even that:

I believe these 2 poems alone justify the entire chapbook, and it winning said poetry prize. It’s hyper personal, and yet equally as… detached. And maybe, just in this case, the poet not going through what she writes about herself actually helped with getting to this level, I mean, the things we do for love and to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror, eh? It’s dirty work, for sure, but work that needs doing none the less. Better learn to survive! Better learn to hide those weak-spots as good as you can. As you must. For allowing yourself to come across as vulnerable is dangerous, as so many of these girls (and boys) know all too well. Hence the sarcasm. All they can do is hope that they can keep accessing those hidden parts of themselves when they’re alone. To be able to remind themselves these feelings exist at all…

I’m still of the opinion that the best poetry comes from personal experience, and like I said, there are quite a few poems in there that do miss the mark, for me at least. Those written in 3rd person, for example, miss the heart wrenching detachment I was talking about earlier, making the exceptions to this formerly unshakable rule of mine even more incredible. And me fucking jealous. Couldn’t write them like that myself if I dared to... And I don’t. For more about the other two winners of the 2025 Rattle chapbook competition, follow this link? Cheers.

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Benne van der Velde

After thoroughly enjoying the Dutch slam poetry scene in the early and mid 2000s (with wins in 7 cities and eventually a place in the Nationals of 2012) and performances at the Lowlands-, Uitmarkt- and Parade festivals a/o, Benne successfully made the transition from the stage to paper by signing his first publishing deal in 2005. Since then 4 publishing houses (kleine Uil, Douane, Nadorst and Stanza) released volumes of his poetry. For a 5th (Passage) he co-edited an anthology of satirical/pamphlet poetry with fellow poets Daniel Dee and Alexis de Roode.

As a member of the artist movement ‘Het Ongeboren Idee’ he helped to organize (and was part of/presented) cultural lo-fi festivals, exhibitions, making a movie, monthly poetry stages in his hometown of Vlaardingen (Poezie in De Steeg), Rotterdam (De Poetsclub) and Nijmegen (Late Letteren Live) + a talent show for bands.

In 2002 and 2003 he studied ‘writing for performance’ at the vocational university of the Arts in the city of Utrecht (HKU) and as a result saw 3 of his theater plays make it to a stage. Writer Hiekelien van den Herik and he co-wrote a knight spectacle play complete with real choreographed sword fights, men in heavy plate armor and more great stuff like that. Theater-/enactment group Ridderspoor performed said play in 2004 and 2005 at Het Archeon, during De Kasteeldagen and at an Elfia-fantasy fair. He also gave numerous poetry and rap workshops at schools and other institutions. There were a lot of collabs too, for example voice-over work for a Rock Opera, a monumental art project for which he partnered up with the artist Erwin Adema and thrice alongside the R.J.S.O (The Rotterdam Youth Symphony Orchestra).

Benne has been an editor for several literary magazines (Krakatau, Renaissance and Op Ruwe Planken), at one time he and his wife owned a secondhand bookstore, he’s been the official poet laureate for his hometown of Vlaardingen and released his first and only Dutch rap-EP in 2011. In 2012 he rapped his way into the finals of Art Rocks. An EP with songs in English followed in 2021. A year later he started translating Dutch musical and lyrical classics from Dutch into English, and vice versa. Some of his short sci-fi and fantasy stories have found their way to medium related websites, magazines and anthology’s.

According to the poet himself rewriting his own poetry, lyrics and prose in English somehow feels like the next logical step in his career, a way to open up to the world at large. Which is both exhilarating and terrifying. So far several of these translations have been published in Bebarbar, Hare’s paw, Festivalforpoetry, Punt Volat, The Dewdrop, The Dillydoun Review and Months to Years a/o.

In everyday (some claim real) life he worked as an industrial tank cleaner, in pest control, on a garbage truck, driving a forklift, in a chemical waste facility, on a Ferry and 10 years as a bartender in a cannabis bar. At the time of writing this resume he can be found at home or in the hospital battling throat cancer. He’s been off the Herb since 2008, has a wife, 2 dogs, mild anxiety issues and likes to read every sci-fi and fantasy classic he can find.

www.linkedin.com/in/benne-van-der-velde-8b17a7296

The poet/lyricist and author Rob Chrispijn: ‘Benne writes sentences that stick; clean, dark and intense. This way a poem lasts!’

The poet Philip Hoorne on the website Poetry rapport: ‘There’s a genius hiding in Benne van der Velde, those are the Good Tidings of today. Amen.’

https://www.doubledutchmagazine.com
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