Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer

He was born in Rijswijk, Netherlands, and studied, lived and worked in Leiden, and he moved permanently to Genoa, Italy, in 2008.

Regarding his own poetry he has outspoken views, not just in his oft-quoted programmatic opening poem "Farewell Dinner," in which he dismisses the hermetic Hans Faverey and calls for "butter-baked images / and bulimic verse".

He feels akin to Lucebert, and he abhors the paper verse of introverted hermetics and meek-hearted dreamers ("stumble, stiff romantic, mumble on").

Thus Pfeijffer, the "gleaner of contrivances," quotes not only Pindar and Ezra Pound, Horace and Lucebert, Sophocles, Derek Walcott, Herman Gorter, Hans Faverey, Martinus Nijhoff and Gerard Reve, but comic book characters as well.

He not only writes about the political martyr Ken Saro Wiwa, but also about C&A sweaters and Fiat Croma, barcodes, canned beer, butt-tight and garamond ten-point italic.

Pfeijffer at the Nacht van de Poëzie 2015 (Dutch Poetry Night event).
Pfeijffer signing his novel Grand Hotel Europa at Eindhoven (2019).
Photo by Pfeiffer of the courtyard of Palazzo Doria Tursi , Via Garibaldi 9, Genoa (2016).
The Hogewoerd address where Pfeijffer lived as a classics student in Leiden (2023).