Carmien Michels (1990) is a poet, author and performer. She holds a Master’s degree in Drama (Media, Writing and Performance Art) and a Postgraduate qualification in Drama Teaching and Multilingualism from the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, where she now teaches herself. She explores verbal and nonverbal language in all its forms, in her educational and artistic practices and in her research. Dancing between the urban and the classic, her passion for rhythm and poetry reached boiling point on the spoken word scene.

In 2016 she won both the Dutch and the European Poetry Slam Championships, and came in third at the World Cup in Paris. Collaborating with various artists, she has been touring ever since. In 2017-2019, she was part of the European programme CELA (Connecting Emerging Literary Artists), in 2019 she joined the European poetry platform Versopolis. Alongside poetry, she has published two novels as well as the story collection Fathers Who Mourn, which was shortlisted for 5 literary prizes and awarded with the BNG Bank Literary Prize 2022 and the Inktaap. Fragments of her novels, short stories and poems have been published in eight languages. Michels has a preference for characters who do not entirely belong and are searching for connection, for meaning, and for a place of their own.

Everything Was Years Ago

No shell can help me hear

what I forgot in the sticking out ears

of my shy years

time after time I can bring back 

my grandmother’s notes

fuzzy voicemails full of sand 

I can replay them in my mind but recalling

what I was like as a child

is a faded sea

Translated by Michele Hutchison