Two Half Faces
Stitou gained huge acclaim upon his entry into the Dutch literary scene at the age of 19 (anecdotally, the poet Remco Campert stood up at Stitou’s performance debut in 1994 and shouted, “finally, a poet again!”). He pulls together east and west in incredible, unexpected ways – often through absurd, free-form, everyday-life comparisons that are both deeply philosophical and accessible (from religion to sex to chicken and fries on the street).
Mustafa Stitou was born in Tetouan, Morocco, in 1974, and grew up in Lelystad, in the Netherlands. He currently lives in Amsterdam, where he studied philosophy at the UvA. He has published four collections of poetry: Mijn vormen (My Forms, 1994), Mijn gedichten (My Poems, 1998), Varkensroze ansichten (Pig-Pink Picture Postcards, 2003), and Tempel (Temple, 2013). He is the recipient of the VSB Poetry Prize, the Jan Campert Prize, the Awater Poetry Prize, and the A. Roland Holst Award.
