Leuven slam poet unleashes her debut novel
Master thesis forms the basis for Carmien Michel's first book, influenced by poetry and full of strong characters
Reading between the lines
Koen BroosBefore this novel, Michels had already proved herself to be a talented and award-winning slam poet, performer, presenter and radio maker, winning the NTR radio prize in 2011. “With slam poetry,” she explains, “you write something and three days later you perform. You live in the here and now and it’s very dependent on an audience that reacts immediately. It’s exhilarating, but I also love writing for readers. It’s a totally different experience. I like the solitude and getting to know your characters over time. It’s a very intimate experience being submerged in your own world for so long.”
But her background did have a big stylistic impact. “My work as a slam poet is totally different, it’s more poetic and eloquent,” she says. “You’re also used to writing short and quick texts, which result in short and neat chapters in this novel, as well as colloquial language.”
We zijn water is a character-driven story revolving around seven people, each of whom tells his or her story in their own chapters. Elena is a teenager coming to terms with her sexuality, then there’s the elderly Maddy who killed her cheating husband, immigrant Fabrizio who meets his granddaughter for the first time, Rolf who decides to build an ark, little inquisitive Max, the unfaithful Clara, and Joseeke, who runs the local cafe and is still trying to come to terms with her past. And at the centre of the story is Sue, the only character who doesn’t get her own chapter but subtly flows through all of them.
We are all passers-by
“I wanted to write about the fact you always look at things from your own point of view,” Michels says. “So I wanted to examine the world through the eyes of seven different characters. I wanted to look at how these characters relate and how a main character (Sue) could be perceived without actually giving her a voice. It was a challenge to make her real seeing as she is merely a perception, making it easier to identify with the others who tell their own tale. But in the end we are all passers-by in each other’s lives.”
I like the solitude and getting to know your characters over time
She also found it interesting that the characters she liked were easier to write than the others and noticed that “you have to make every character unique and let go of clichés if you want to make them credible.”
We zijn water is about people who are looking for that missing piece of the puzzle, in life as well as in themselves. What’s so clever about this novel is that Michels has actually constructed the story as a puzzle, leaving us, the reader, to connect the dots and making it quite experimental and bold for a debut novel.
“The novel took me two years to write,” she says, “but the content changed a lot during that time. It’s not just the characters who are looking for something; I as a writer was also searching for answers. I changed the structure a lot to make sure everything eventually falls into place but the characters evolved quite gradually. I had an idea but not a clear-cut story from the start.”
Ultimately all lives are linked in what can be best described as an unsuspecting snapshot of daily life. Michels confesses that she “loves it when you have to read between the lines and draw your own conclusion. It feels like you’re being rewarded”.
Michels has a keen eye when it comes to observing her surroundings as well as conveying what lurks beneath the deceptively smooth surface. Adapting her style with each character, her prose is minimalist and straightforward. There are no sumptuous sentences of superfluous scenes, creating a great contrast with her work as slam poet. The narrative is carried by an eclectic canvas of vibrant characters, showing us that Michels is a promising renaissance woman.
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About the author
