“Hans Lodeizen (1924-1950) died of leukaemia at just twenty-six, but his reputation and popularity as a poet continued to grow in the decades following his death, especially with successive generations of young readers. One of the first Dutch poets to draw on the power of colloquial language, his poetry moved away from the styles of the pre-war period and paved the way for the experiment of the 1950s. Although his premature death prevented him from joining his contemporaries in the Vijftigers, they saw him as a kindred spirit and helped promote his work.

Starting in 1946, Lodeizen studied law briefly in Leiden, but took an interest in biology and pursued graduate study at Amherst College in the United States in 1947-1948. There he befriended the poet James Merrill who, after becoming "smitten" with Lodeizen,[1] would describe him many years later as "clever, goodnatured, solitary, blond, / all to a disquieting degree".[3] Lodeizen lost interest in his graduate biology program and returned to Europe to work (reluctantly) for his father's firm. Lodeizen was either gay or bisexual; as a young man he had proposed marriage to a woman, but his poetry speaks of his love and desire for other men. In 1948 he was arrested for having had sex with another man, but his father's money and influence likely prevented a trial. His father disapproved of his life in many ways—Lodeizen wanted to write poetry, not study law, and he did not want to enter the family business, but at the same time he desperately wanted his father's approval while his father refused to accept his sexuality. This tension is, besides lost romantic love and the ephemeral nature of the world, the most important theme in his poetry. Lodeizen's "ben ik nu werkelijk zo slecht" (am I really this bad) cites the disapproving words of his father: "wat jij me al niet in mijn leven / hebt aangedaan kan ik niet vergeten", all the things you've done to me in my life, I cannot forget them. After his death, when his remaining poetry was to be published, his father wanted thirteen of his son's poems scrapped, though the editors did include them.[2]

In 1951 Lodeizen was awarded the Jan Campert Prize, posthumously. A selection of his poems was added to Het innerlijk behang and published in 1952, edited by J. C. Bloem, Jan Greshoff, and Adriaan Morriën, as Gedichten. Another selection, edited by Pierre H. Duboisand P. Berger and published in 1969 as Nagelaten werk, also included prose. These posthumous publications show more clearly to which extent Lodeizen's homosexuality colored his poetry. A collected works, Verzamelde gedichten van Lodeizen, was published in 1996, edited by W.J. van den Akker et al., with introduction, notes, and index.[4]”

“James Brockway (1916-2000) was a British poet who settled in the Netherlands after the Second World War and became one of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent translators of Dutch poetry.

His first poetry collection, No Summer Song, appeared in 1949.[1] He also contributed widely to Dutch newspapers and literary periodicals[2] and, from 1960 onwards, was publishing English translations of modern Dutch poets and placing them in British literary magazines.[1]

Some of the poets whose work he translated into English include Rutger Kopland, Anton Korteweg, M. Vasalis, Hans Lodeizen, Gerrit Achterberg, Remco Campert, Tom van Deel, J. C. Bloem and Patty Scholten.[1][2][4][5][6][7][8] Kopland in particular was a poet with whose work he had had a special affinity with since the 1980s,[9] and had enjoyed a close working collaboration with him.[5] He also translated English novels into Dutch and won the most prestigious Dutch translation award, the Martinus Nijhoff Prize, in 1966. Brockway was later knighted by the Dutch government.

After his death, the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature inaugurated a biennial award, The Brockway Prize, for the translation of Dutch poetry; the first award was made in 2005.[10] The prize is awarded for a body of work and the target language changes on a rotating basis. English-language winners have been Francis R. Jones in 2005, Judith Wilkinson in 2013, and David Colmer in 2021. Additionally a Brockway Workshop has also been set up, to run every two years, offering more practical support to international poetry translators.[4]”

‘Jim, I’d Like to Know’ first got published in Singers behind Glass, Sunk Island Publishing, 1995
We (Double Dutch magazine) found the original on Nederlands.nl and its translation on Verseville.org