Ida Gerhardt

In 1942 she graduated cum laude on the translation of Lucretius' De rerum natura, Books I and V. From 1937 she was a teacher in Groningen, then in Kampen.

In 1951, at the request of the non-conformist pedagogue Kees Boeke, she joined him at the school section of the Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap in Bilthoven.

Just before the outbreak of World War II in May 1940, Ida Gerhardt made her debut with her first collection of poems, Kosmos.

Formed by her classical education and inspired by Christian beliefs, she does not confine to landscape descriptions, but always looks for kosmos, the unity in and of all creation.

Every poem is a complex network, full of sometimes mysterious relations between words, elements of nature, personal (even private) experiences, and the higher reality.