Arno Bohlmeijer
on translating Bart Chabot
While American English generally likes more commas, Chabot’s poems have hardly any punctuation, so from the start, there was a basic challenge to this translation. However, a mild compromise — or “give and take” — now allows for the English version to fully showcase this poem’s bold beauty and original intrigue. Chabot agrees with my well-weighed additions of commas here and there, and the text is so compelling that readers will easily get used to the overall lack of punctuation.
This poem is as personal as it is universal, set in Holland’s famous international city of The Hague, Chabot’s town, where United States President John Adams bought a house. The Hague has been the world city of peace and law for 125 years, hosting the 2025 NATO summit last year. The English version of this poem is able to maintain the strength of the Dutch source material because names of important cities such as The Hague have been kept intact and authentic.
The balance between respecting the original text and rendering fluent English is always tricky. To my surprise and pleasure, Chabot himself, at one point, suggested skipping the translation of a particular phrase that in English would be “untranslatable," as any alternative would disturb the poem's coherence.
about the author
Bart Chabot has been one of Holland’s most original and successful poets, novelists, biographers, and performers for the last forty-five years, winning national awards and engaging a broad audience with his sharp irony and unusual humor. Critics have praised his work as “magic, witty, accessible," with “poetic and disarming observations."
about the translator
Winner of a PEN America Grant in 2021, Arno Bohlmeijer is a novelist and poet who writes in both English and Dutch and who has published in six countries – in the U.S. with Houghton Mifflin, and in the anthology Universal Oneness: Magnum Opus Poems from around the World. His novel Narrowly, about rare solidarity, will appear in September 2026.
