1 March 2021
The acclaimed author Marieke Lucas Rijneveld has pulled out of translating Amanda Gorman's poetry into Dutch, after their publisher was criticised for picking a writer for the role who was not also Black.
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Dutch publisher Meulenhoff had announced Rijneveld, winner of the International Booker prize, as the translator of the Joe Biden inaugural poet's forthcoming collection, The Hill We Climb, last week. But the move quickly drew opprobrium. Journalist and activist Janice Deul led critics with a piece in Volkskrant asking why Meulenhoff had not chosen a translator who was, like Gorman, a "spoken-word artist, young, female and unapologetically Black".
