The Postcolonial Flaneur. Ramsey Nasr’s 'Antwerpse stadsgedichten'

Abstract

The ways in which the poems of Ramsey Nasr explore the urban space of the Flemish city of Antwerp and stage encounters with various inhabitants of the Flemish metropolis are examined. In 2005, Nasr, a poet of Palestinian– Dutch background, was appointed City Poet of Antwerp. The nine poems that he wrote during this one-year-appointment were published in his third poetry collection onze-lieve-vrouwe-zeppelin. Antwerpse gedichten (2006). Through close analysis of three selected poems it is shown how this work by an urban poet-with-official-status, a representative poet so to speak, represents the Antwerp cityscape. By reading the poems as examples of a third phase of literary flanerie (whereby flanerie refers to a particularly productive combination of simultaneous moving and seeing, reading and interpreting), what could be called postcolonial flanerie is conceptualized. Postcolonial flanerie refers to a particular way of processing the, at times, overwhelming experiences of the increasingly globalized metropolis. Nasr’s ‘Antwerpse stadsgedichten’ [Antwerp city poems] feature as a poetic test case of postcolonial flanerie.