Icons of Passion
Icons of Passion
Poetry route
November, December 2012 and January 2013
The Ghent red-light district around the Pieter Vanderdoncktdoorgang has many faces. Contrasts are everywhere: classy establishments, architectural heritage, art galleries, bars, pubs, brothels ... Also, the social mix is equally full of contrast and extremely interesting. The area is not only inspiring but also a platform to display poetry. In this way, a trail was created along the small businesses where poems and pictures by Sabine Martens are shown revolving around the themes of desire and destruction. The inspiration for the poems resulted in two cycles titled "Words of Desire" and "Words of Destruction". These cycles are preceded by a prologue and by the long poem "Ballad of the Dead Poet".
The urge emerged to not only publish in the normal sense of the word but to throw the work in the face of the public. The incentive for this was the cooperation with Edward Hostyn, who at the time ran concept bar Ycono at the corner of Brabantdam and Pieter Vanderdoncktdoorgang. In this bar most works are displayed, which in the end were brought together on one material on which poems and pictures are joined. The trail starting in the hallway of restaurant Faim Fatale proceeds through the red light district to concept bar Ycono. The works are hanging in the windows and can be seen by all passers-by. Most of the pictures were taken in the red-light district. People walking through this area can rediscover it on the works in the windows.
The publication “A Dead Poet’s Searching Soul Never Rests” (Sabine Martens) is a collection of all poems and the best pictures.
We are who we are - no escaping that. Sometimes life forces you in certain directions; are you obliged to follow a path merely to survive. Sometimes you make choices because a certain feature of yourself urges you in that direction. But at a given time the essence of your true self surfaces and nothing can stop you. You can compare it to a giant jar of food that has been left yeasting for months until the lid blows off and everything is scattered around.
I think it is like this with all creative spirits. You can tag along in the daily routine from an economic point of view but then hardly time or space for creation is left. Then there is no silent loneliness constructing the room in which your thoughts are at home and reach new forms. You can choose for an existence of certainty because your feet need roots but then it is difficult to tread on soils that move you and stir up your passion.
The search for balance is not an easy road to travel and that path sometimes even is a dead end. Taking a detour again and again is tiring but necessary at the same time because somewhere a trail leads to the essence.
It wasn't any different than that for me. Weaving words into something that makes me unique, is my faith. Long ago I knew the uncontrollable urge to "make". I was published and recognized although the pleasure of the creative moment remains the greatest and the most unachievable. Meanwhile, I have walked various roads - one difficult to walk on, another slippery or blocked. I have the feeling I walked just as I should have walked with an internal biological and psychological clock as a GPS, to reach my origin, to reach what makes me "me" and in that way I make myself. I cannot do otherwise, this is my existence.
I am a resurrected "dead" poet.
