Lisanne Jacobs
Lisanne Jacobs is a Dutch singer-songwriter and poet whose life imploded mere months after she graduated from the Utrecht Conservatory in 2015. Theatre stages were rapidly replaced by doctor’s offices, while dreams were swallowed up by a growing sense of despair. She has kept creating from bed throughout various stages of illness, collaborating with patient organisations like MEaction as well as fellow disabled artists. She likes to explore themes of living loss, medical gaslighting, sensemaking and the passage of time in her delicate compositions. In 2023, she was awarded the Simon Michaël Coninckx price for her poem “Pitseleh”.
No Alarms and More Surprises, Please
“I’m sick of settling for small joys”, I whisper
to the hollow in my chest. Silence follows
& I’m just as sick of settling for that.
When will it be my turn to waltz
around the moon? I want to rage, to act
my age until my lungs fill up with stardust.
Do I still have what it takes to make you
come apart? Oh, I would like to see me try;
to love a good man in ways
that would run a better poet dry.
Don’t you understand? I simply ache
to be someone again. God knows all I ever
am these days is tired.
There is only so much darkness
one can touch, only so long one can live
for promises of light.
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