Translation as Art: A Deep Dive Into Poems for Every Season with author Bette Westera and translator David Colmer

While I am aware that Poetry Month is a full month away, I would like to point out to you that 2026 has already turned out to be a boffo year for the stuff. I mean, have you SEEN the poetry that’s either out or about to premiere?!? Between Fourteen Ways of Looking at Jellyfish by Carole Boston Weatherford, Goldfinchesby Mary Oliver, Melodies of the Weary Blues: Classic Poems Illustrated for Young People, by Langston Hughes, and Nature’s Remarkable Partners: Wild Poems for Two Voices by Leslie Bulion, we’re swamped with quality (and did I just hand you your shopping list for April? Why, yes… yes, I did).

There’s one book in that list that I failed to mention on that list, though, and it’s the subject of today’s discussion. Poems for Every Season is precisely that: A poem a month accompanied by striking woodcuts, and presented in a variety of forms (haiku, sonnet, etc.). That would normally be enough, but the folks at Eerdmans decided to crank up the difficulty level to eleven. The poems are beautiful and meaningful… and translated. Now imagine for a moment, if you will, the difficulty in translated a sonnet or a rondel. How does that change the very experience of the poem? Is it the same poem? Is it different?

Today, we’re discussing these very matters with none other than Bette Westera, Dutch children’s author, and David Colmer, her translator on Poems for Every Season. And believe me, I had a lot of questions to ask:

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Betsy Bird: Bette! What a delight to host you here today. POEMS FOR EVERY SEASON is, as many will know, a gorgeous compendium of poetry seen through the lens of the seasons. How did you get the idea for this collection?

Bette Westera: I love writing poems for children. I usually choose the form myself, but for this book, I thought it would be nice to work with existing forms. The twelve months of the year lend themselves well to this.

Henriette’s woodcuts are very poetic and inspiring. Sometimes the woodcut came first, sometimes the poem. The idea to include a section on all the different verse forms in the book only came later. This makes the book very suitable for use in poetry workshops at schools.

BB: Agreed. And David, I really appreciate you taking the time to answer some of my questions as well.

David Colmer: My pleasure, Betsy, and I owe it to you for all your kind reviews over the years!

BB: Oh. Well, I call ’em like I see ’em. Now my first question for you, and the one that is probably at the forefront of everyone’s mind, is one simply of logistics. When you received information about this project, it would have been clear from the start just how difficult it was going to be. Yet in spite of that, you said yes! What was going through your mind as you
accepted this project?

David: I was actually able to ease into it because I was first approached by the Dutch publisher to translate a selection of the poems for a promotional excerpt. I only did four or five of them at that stage, so that was much less daunting. And then I was committed, of course, so when Eerdmans picked the book up, I couldn’t back out! Not that I wanted to. I was really pleased to have the opportunity to work on such a beautiful book. I think it helped that I’d worked with Bette before and knew that, as a translator herself, she understands the liberties you have to take to make a poem come to life in another language and appreciates the purpose of the imaginative leaps.

BB: Let’s get into that language a bit. Bette, did you have a system for which kind of poem (tanka, limerick, etc.) would pair well with one season or another? How did you decide which poetry style to use at any given time?

Bette: I work quite intuitively. As I went along, a suitable poem emerged for each month of the year, in a form that suited it. Sometimes a beautiful sentence for a particular month would come to mind, and from that, the poem would evolve. So, the form actually evolved from that first sentence.

I had already decided beforehand that the haikus would be based on the four seasons.

BB: Once you established the forms, it was up to David to translated. So, David, please let us know what the logistics of this project looked like from your end. Translating, say, a sonnet or a rondel would mean to me retaining the sense of each line if not its exact wording. What does this work look like from your end? What does this form of translation look like to you? 

David: You’re right about that, except that you don’t have to work line by line, so sometimes you can move things around, trim them, or expand them. Of course, it’s easiest if you’re able to follow the original closely, but if rhyme and rhythm don’t cooperate, you have reach a little further, and the more rigorous the rhyme scheme and the tighter the rhythm, the further you have to go. Bette’s rondel, “Spring Dance”, is a good example of that. The English version has the same subject and shares a few of the images, but a lot of the content is new and chosen to fit the form.

BB: Sounds like a lot of trial and error went into it, though. Bette, from the poetic standpoint, was there any trial and error on your end with this project? Which is to say, did you ever try to do a poetical style with one poem and find that it didn’t work? 

Bette: I don’t remember that well, but I think so. I delete and rewrite a lot. Sometimes two poems would emerge in a month, and then Henriette [the illustrator] and I would choose the most appealing one together.

BB: Since you brought her up, the art of Henriette Boerendans is positively extraordinary on the page. Were you aware of Henriette before being paired for this project? What is your feeling about the final product? 

Bette: Henriette Boerendans crossed my path years ago. I was immediately struck by her work. What a tremendous combination of creativity and craftsmanship! The first book we did together was Ape Bear Zebra, which was soon nominated for a prize. It was a collaboration that begged to be extended, and when I got the idea of a book about trees and all the things that can be made from wood, I immediately thought of Henriette and her woodcuts. She was the perfect person to illustrate a book about wood. Walking in nature together, we brainstormed about new projects. That was how we came up with the idea of a book about the seasons.

BB: Frankly, I’m now hoping for a translation of Ape Bear Zebra. Speaking of translating, David, in your own experience, how often have you been asked to do a translation of
this type? Have you ever done similar projects before?

David: The way this book presents so many different poetic forms is new to me, but I have translated a lot of poetry, both adults’ and children’s, and a reasonable amount of that has been poetry with a fixed form. Most notably, I’ve translated a lot of poems by Annie M.G. Schmidt, the greatest 20th-century Dutch children’s author, who uses a tremendous range of metrical and rhyming patterns. (Eerdmans published a selection of her poems in A Pond Full of Ink). Here in the Netherlands, Bette is actually seen as the main poetic heir to Annie Schmidt.

BB: Oh yes! I remember A Pond Full of Ink! Well, you’ve kind of already answered my question here, but what was it about Bette’s words that you wanted to capture or convey to young readers that was singular?

David: I think the fun of it. The pleasure she takes in crafting these poems and expressing herself and the way she shows that a poetic form is not so much a limitation as a verbal playground. The rules of the poetic form are like the physical layout of the playground, and that shapes the way you play with the words. And when you’re finished, you see that by sticking to the form you’ve created a poem that works. I found that too, while translating, and I hope that, besides enjoying the book as something to read and listen to, children will be inspired and discover that poetry isn’t intimidating, but something they can write, too.

BB: Bette, I’d love it if you could tell us a bit about translating these poems into English. Did you have any worries about how well they would work from one language to another? How do you feel about David’s work? 

Bette: David Colmer has translated several of my poems before. He has a great sense of rhyme and rhythm, and I was certain the book would be in good hands with him. His translations are beautiful; I’m thrilled with the result!

BB: Finally, what’s next for the both of you? What else are you working on? 

Bette: My next book will be an adaptation of The Little Mermaid, the well-known fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. It will be illustrated by Aïda de Jong. Her fairytale style perfectly suits the story.

David: I’ve just started work on my first translation from German, Anna Haifisch’s The Cricket in the Violin, which I’m really pleased about. Not just because it’s such a cute, quirky book, but also because German was my first foreign language and I’ve always wanted to translate at least some German books. Besides that, a gorgeous new book by Leo Timmers called Kiki and Me will be out soon, as will a new installment in the fabulously energetic Captain Danger series by Victor Engbers, Captain Danger and the Time Ghost.

BB: That Kiki and Me book is an absolute gobstopper. So happy to hear you worked on that one.

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Huge thanks to both Bette and David for taking the time to answer my questions today. Thanks too to Amy Burton Storey and the team at Eerdmans for helping to put this all together. Poems for Every Season is out now, so no waiting is required. Check it out today!

Filed under: Interviews