On the way home, I thought about the accumulations of our lives: the people we meet, the places we see, the possessions we acquire, the books we read, the experiences we gather. The joy but also the burden of having so much, and gathering more and more; the realisation that we can’t hold all of this in our hands, in our memories – that some good things have to be allowed to slip away into absence. Tiny, bittersweet scars.

The door of my train carriage came to a halt right in front of a poster advertising the festival: 11-18 June. It was over.

Later, back at home, I drank tea and leafed through the New York Review of Books that had been delivered in my absence. There was an essay by Charles Simic (who wrote an essay on prose poetry for Poetry International this year), a review of a novel translated by David Colmer, who translated Nyk de Vries’ poems for the festival, and a piece about festival poet C.K. Williams’ autobiography of Walt Whitman. This wasn’t reassuring simply in terms of coincidence, or of having had ‘big names’ associated with the festival; it was a reminder that texts, unlike human encounters, aren’t contained by geography or time – a poet’s non-presence doesn’t prevent us from experiencing their work. Perhaps the black hole could be mitigated a little – after a lot of sleep – through reading.

During the festival we will be live-streaming selected international events, and we’ll be making Poetry Clip film portraits of the poets, as we’ve done in previous years. These will be added to PIW, along with audio recordings of interviews and poetry readings. We’ll keep you updated about new material on PIW, and all the other goings-on at the festival via this blog.

For a schedule and more information about the festival, visit www.poetry.nl.