Iconic Amsterdam poet and 'weed ambassador' dies
Remembering a man who helped launch the Dutch Fifties Movement.
13/07/2009
Amsterdam Poet and author Simon Vinkenoog, a man who loved
Amsterdam and its beatnik attitude, has died, his family said Sunday.
The 80-year-old Vinkenoog had been ill for some time, having
undergone a leg amputation and suffering a brain haemorrhage.
He lost consciousness in the Revalidatiecentrum Amsterdam (a health
revitalization centre) where he was recovering from his amputation,
and died Sunday shortly thereafter.
Works
His first volume of poetry, entitled Wondkoorts ("Traumatic Fever"),
appeared in 1950.
In 1951, he edited the anthology Atonaal ("Atonal"), which helped
launch the Dutch "Fifties Movement," a group of artists and writers
who rejected their predecessors perspectives on art.
Vinkenoog also focused on the American beat poets, publishing Jack
Kerouac in Amsterdam in 1980.
One of his last works was a 2001 translation of Allen Ginsberg's
poetry, Me and my peepee.
In 2004, Simon Vinkenoog was elected Dutch poet laureate. In that
same year, he ended a decades-long run with Bres, a magazine that
regularly published his articles, starting with an exploration of LSD in 1968.
Vinkenoog loved the city where he was born and where he lived, and
published an ode to his native Amsterdam, Am*dam Madmaster, in 2008.
Drugs advocate
In addition to his purely literary work, Vinkenoog wrote profusely
about his experiences with drugs, and published titles such as How to
Enjoy Reality (1968).
Vinkenoog has been known as Amsterdam's "weed ambassador" since the 1960s.
In the 2006 general elections, he was a figurehead for a small
political party which promoted the legalisation of cannabis. The
party did not succeed in winning any seats in the lower house of parliament.
One of his most recent appearances was in 2007, when he lent support
to a demonstration in Amsterdam against a proposed ban on magic mushrooms.
The 1960s continue to fade
Simon Vinkenoog represented the time when the Dutch capital gained
its reputation as a drugs-friendly 'Magic Centre', which it has
managed to retain to this day.
With his death, Amsterdam loses one more of its iconic throwbacks to
the swinging sixties.
Earlier in 2009, performance artist Robert Jasper Grootveld also died.
Grootveld was known for his large-scale open-air ceremonies in the
mid-sixties in which he mocked bourgeois hypocrisy.
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Poet Simon Vinkenoog dies at 80
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2009/07/poet_simon_vinkenoog_dies_at_8.php
Monday 13 July 2009
Poet, writer and artist Simon Vinkenoog has died in Amsterdam at the
age of 80, just one month after having his right leg amputated.
Vinkenoog, who described losing his leg as 'an experience' and filled
his website with pictures of his fellow patients, died of a stroke.
The poet, famous for his flowing grey hair, was a symbol of the 1960s
and was friends with beat poets such as Alllen Ginsberg, whose work
he translated. Last year a collection of his correspondence with Hugo
Claus in the 1950s was published.
In 2004 he was chosen as Dichter des Vaderlands, or Poet Laureate.
In 1965 he served six weeks in jail for possessing marijuana, a drug
he continued to enjoy until he died. At the 2006 general election he
stood for election for a party calling for the legalisation of cannabis.
Vinkenoog was married six times.
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