I PROMISED TO WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT MYSELF

I promised to write something about myself and I will do that in this third blog. I was born in 1959 in Middelburg, the capital of the province of Zeeland, on the former island of Walcheren, and I live about five kilometers from where the Western Scheldt flows into the North Sea. In the mid-seventies I started writing poems and music.

To start with the writing: as mentioned, it started with poems in the 1970s. I started writing stories in the mid-eighties. At the end of the eighties I won the Zeeuws Amateur Writers Festival twice and then I thought I might have to continue with it. In 1994 my first children’s books came out, soon followed by non-fiction, especially in the field of nature, landscape and history. In 2006 I won the Zeeland Book Prize, together with Jan J.B. Kuipers, for The Story of Zeeland, an overview of Zeeland history. I also contributed to teaching methods in the field of history and language. In 2013 I started writing for adults again. Two novels, four collections of short stories and five volumes in the Mary Copeland series have since been published, in addition to a number of other books. The book featured on this website is the first part of that series, now translated into English and available for the English-speaking market. Many of my stories have appeared in national magazines.

Then about music: I had classical guitar lessons for six years, but I don’t know much about that anymore. When I wanted to play in a band, it quickly became electric. I wrote my own music and so I can call myself a singer-songwriter. The first gigs were in the mid-seventies and after that I performed both solo and with bands, both inside and outside the province. They had names like Swiers & Company, The Beamholes and Swiers & De Nennie. The first two were mainly heavy rock music with ballads and a single cover in between. Swiers & De Nennie involved musical theatre, with films, poems, music and performances. At the moment I still play with musical friends in a cover band, Yesterday’s Papers. We play music from the sixties and seventies. Our performances are in our province. I still make my own music and I also record it, but only for myself and some friends.

My daily work has been with the province of Zeeland for almost forty years, as a policy officer for the provincial government. First I worked for ten years in the field of education – I am originally a teacher, but have only been in front of the classroom for one year due to a declining number of students – and then twenty years in communication. Now I work as a relationship manager for spatial plans and I regularly visit municipalities to talk to them about those plans. I still work 3.5 days for the province. So I can spend the rest of the time on my creativity, although I also like to work in the garden and go on holiday.

I’ve done a lot more, but I’ll tell you that in another blog.

Thanks for reading this. On to the next blog.

With kind regards,

Robbert Jan.

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