Alexis de Roode started reading poetry in public in 2003, made his debut in 2005, and has since published four poetry collections with Podium Publishers in Amsterdam. He also co-edited an anthology of Dutch satyrical/hate/anger/pamphlet verse with fellow poets Daniel Dee and Benne van der Velde. His poems were included in more than 70 anthologies and special publications, including translations to German, French, English and Polish. In March 2017 his well-received fourth collection, Unfolding a stone, came out.

De Roode performed at events like Nacht van de Poëzie, Lowlands, Dichter aan Huis, Crossing Border Festival, and the poetry summer in Watou. A few of his (church)songs got included Liedboek.[2] De Roode lives in Utrecht and helped organise Het Poëziecircus and the Nederlands Kampioenschap Poetry Slam. In 2014 he became Gildemeester of the Utrechts Stadsdichtersgilde, which the poet Ingmar Heytze started in 2009.

Poetry International Rotterdam created a page on Poetry International Web with an introduction to his work and English translations of ten poems from Unfolding a stone by Donald Gardner. You can find it here.

A quote from the page: “The poet, who was praised for his “grotesque play with language”, has grown into a distinct voice in the Dutch poetry landscape.”

JOURNALISM

de Roode is also a freelance journalist focusing on nature preservation, travel, circular economy, True Cost Accounting and biological agriculture, and as such has written for NRC, Trouw, Volkskrant, Foodlog and De Groene Amsterdammer a.o. In 2024 Alexis accepted a job as translator at the EU in Brussels (English to Dutch)

Editorial note: both ‘Plicht’ and its translation by Mr. Gardner were previously published on Poetry International.

Donald Gardner, poet and translator, was born in London. He studied in Oxford and Bologna and lived in New York in the mid-sixties and travelled extensively in Mexico and Nicaragua. He began writing in the early 60s and is known for his presentations of his own poetry. His first live reading was at the Poetry Project, New York, in 1965 and in 1967, he took the stage at the East Village Theatre, in the company of Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and others for an audience of 2000. His first collection of poetry, Peace Feelers, was published in London by Café Books and a second collection, For the Flames (Fulcrum),followed in 1974.

On emigrating to the Netherlands in 1979, he made a number of performance pieces, based on his own poetry, most notably Chicken with Madness, a dance-performance, directed by the Italian choreographer, Patrizia Filia. It was presented inLondon, Amsterdam and New York. Returning to more formal poetry, he published How to Get the Most out of your Jet Lag (New Haven, Ct., 2001) and The Wolf Inside (Hearing Eye, 2014). His New and Selected Poems (1966-2020), appeared with Grey Suit Editions in 2021.

Gardner was originally a translator of Latin American writers: The Sun Stone by Octavio Paz and Zero Hour by Ernesto Cardenal. He is the translator, in collaboration with the author, of Three Trapped Tigers by the Cuban novelist, Guillermo Cabrera Infante. (Of this book, Salman Rushdie wrote: ‘I don’t know why any human beings should wish to attempt a task as difficult as this – perhaps because it was there.’) A translator of many Dutch and Flemish poets, he won the Vondel Prize in 2015 for his translations of Remco Campert, In those Days (Shoestring Press). Recently he published a collection of Maria Barnas’s poetry, Night Boat and other Poems (Shearsman Books, 2025). His collection of translations of Stefan Hertmans’ poetry, Goya as Dog, will appear early in 2026, also with Shearsman.

Edit: Benne wrote this about some of Donald’s ‘New and Selected Poems (1966-2020)’ in one of our feature articles! Also: issue 0 includes Mr. Gardner’s translation of ‘als je nooit in haar schoenen hebt gelopen’ by Babs Gons and our 1st his own poem ‘Death & Taxes’.