- Born
- Died
- Herman de Coninck was born on February 21, 1944 in Mechelen, Flanders, Belgium. He was a writer, known for Poëzie in 625 lijnen (1955), De stilte (1981) and Een kamer in de stad (1977). He died on May 22, 1997 in Lisboa, Portugal.
- Determined to become a writer, he studied Germanic philology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. While in Leuven he wrote for the University paper Universitas.
- Collections, such as Met een Klank van Hobo (1980) and De Hectaren van het Geheugen (1985) show a shift to a more romantic topos in his poetry.
- Herman de Coninck was a Belgian poet, essayist, journalist and publisher.
- The death of de Coninck's first wife, An Somers, in a car accident in 1971 began a difficult period in his life. The loss of his wife deeply influenced his second volume of poetry, Zolang er sneeuw ligt(1975). The collection won both the "Dirk Martensprijs van de Stad Aalst" (1976) and the "Prijs van de Vlaamse Provincieën" (1978).
- As a poet, De Coninck aimed to produce poetry for the masses. His first volume, De Lenige Liefde, appeared in 1969, becoming the best-selling volume of 20th-century Flemish poetry and winning literary prizes such as the "Yang-prijs" (1969) and the "Prijs van de Provincie Antwerpen" (1971). The collection has a relativating tone, and not seldom the poems have an ironic undertone.
- Socialism: form of government in which people are only unhappy for the right reasons.
- People are not destroyed by pessimism, but by idealism
- No poet uses a rhyming dictionary. A good rhyming dictionary uses poets
- Silence is the difference between saying nothing and having already said everything
- That's the best thing you can do with an opinion: differ.
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