Sjoerd Kuyper

Sjoerd Kuyper (born 6 March 1952, Amsterdam) is a Dutch poetry and prose writer of adult, children's and youth books, theatre, TV series, film scripts and lyrics.

His best-known works are the film Het zakmes (The Pocket-knife), the series of books about the toddler Robin, the poem Mensen met koffers (People with Suitcases), the lyrics Hallo wereld (Hello World) and the youth novels Hotel De Grote L (The Big L hotel) and Bizar (Bizarre).

His books have been published in fifteen countries.

He has won, among other things, six Zilveren Griffels and a Gouden Griffel for Robin en God (Robin and God).

Sjoerd Kuyper was born on 6 March 1952 in Amsterdam-East.

At the age of two, he moved with his parents to the village of Berkhout, near Hoorn, where his father became a teacher.

Sjoerd has described the seven years he spent there  in his series of books about the toddler Robin.

In 1956, his sister was born: Trudy.

In 1961, the family moved to Oostvoorne, on the South Holland islands, where one year later, on Kuyper's tenth birthday, brother Hans was born.

In Oostvoorne, Kuyper, who was thirteen years old, started writing stories, inspired by Jules Verne, but especially poetry.

He attended the HBS secondary school education in Brielle and published in the school newspaper, of which he was also an editor.

In 1967 they moved to Winkel NH and Kuyper attended the HBS in Schagen.

In Winkel he and his friends started a publishing house, Walpurgisnacht, which brought stencilled books with their own work to the market.

In that period, Sjoerd published a story in Het Noordhollands Dagblad and a poem in De Groene Amsterdammer.

A poem he had published in the school newspaper was included in the national anthology ‘een 10 voor tieners’ ('a 10 for the teenagers') and he wrote a song, De NAVO Blues (The NATO Blues), which he sang with friends in the TV programme 'Dit is het begin' (This is the beginning).

In 1969 he passed the HBS-A exam and left for Amsterdam to study philosophy.

There he met the young poets Hans Clavin, Robert Paul Flipse, Peter Nijmeijer and Hans van Weely, and together with Leo Bankersen as the designer they started the Fizz-Subvers Press.

Initially only their own work was published, but later collections of Bert Schierbeek, Sybren Polet, Guus Luijters and Ben Borgart were also published, as well as translations by Dadaist and surrealist poets.

On 11 July 1970, Sjoerd met Margje Burger in the Alkmaarder Hout, where he read poetry during the interval of a pop concert.

They have been together ever since.

They moved into a summer house in the garden of Peter Nijmeijer, who had gone to live in Nieuwe Niedorp.

Kuyper occasionally travelled to Amsterdam, because of his studies, and published in obscure Flemish magazines and very occasionally in Propria Cures.

The breakthrough came when Hans Verhagen got involved with his poems and offered them to De Bezige Bij. The collection Ik herinner mij Klaas Kristiaan (I remember Klaas Kristiaan) appeared in 1974.

Kuyper felt at home at De Bezige Bij and soon he was a board member, editor and organiser of poetry readings on behalf of the publishing company: ‘Ontmoet de dichters’ ('Meet the poets').

In the year of his debut he read from his work at Poetry International.

He gave up his studies and became a full-time writer: editorials and poetry reviews for De Nieuwe Linie, articles in de VPRO Gids, reviews on puppetry in De Volkskrant.

He translated books written by J.M. Synge and Jamake Highwater, among others, and wrote his first children's stories for the radio programme De Ko de Boswachtershow.

In 1975 Margje and he moved to a houseboat in Neck, Wijdewormer.

Margje and Sjoerd married in 1976, their son Joost was born in 1984 and their daughter Marianne in 1986.

In 1978, Sjoerd wrote his first TV series, De Grote Klok (The Big Clock), with Jacques Vriens, and together with Margje as a photographer, he made reports about the Aran Islands, Brittany and New York - for the magazine Bzzlletin.

They were published in De Nieuwe Linie and De Tijd, and later collected in Het Nieuwe Proza (1978) and Dichters (1980).

In 1980, Sjoerd participated in the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa City.

He and Margje stayed there for four months and met fellow writers such as John Banville, Earl Lovelace and Leonard Nolens.

In that same year, Sjoerd and his sister Trudy, who would become known as 'the queen of hand puppetry' with her puppet theatre Dibbes, founded publishing house Bobbelie and started to publish the puppet shows of puppet theatre Dibbes in book form as well.

The first part was called De Boommannetjes (The Little Tree Men) The piece was written by Trudy, the text in prose by Sjoerd.

In the meantime he continued to publish with De Bezige Bij: two collections of poetry and two prose books.

And he did interviews, together with his friend Johan Diepstraten, first with young prose writers like Maarten 't Hart, Doeschka Meijsing and Jan Siebelink, later with young poets like H.H. ter Balkt, Frank Koenegracht, Gerrit Komrij, Hans Tentije and Willem Wilmink.

The friendship with Johan would later lead to a youth novel written together, De verborgen steeg (The Hidden Alley) (1986), which was awarded a prize by many children's juries.

Johan died in 1999, at the age of forty-eight.

In 2012 he was awarded the Theo Thijssen Prijs for his entire oeuvre, and in 2014 he was appointed Officier in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau for his merits in Dutch literature at home and abroad.