Johan "Johnny" van Doorn (12 November 1944 – 26 January 1991) was a Dutch writer, poet, and performer, first in Arnhem, later in the country's capital Amsterdam.

As a poet Van Doorn called himself Johnny the Selfkicker, a nickname fulfilled by means of wild, often haphazard, performances, during which he never failed to work himself into a frenzy, often resulting in him collapsing in front of an astonished audience, for example in the middle of a large retail outlet.

Johan van Doorn was born on 12 November 1944, during the final stages of World War II, in the village of Beekbergen.

His childhood years were not easy for Van Doorn, because he was born from a marriage between a Dutch man and a German woman.

[clarification needed] Later he became well known for his "primordial verse", as he used to call it; poetry at its very roots, the cradle of humanity from which nothing emanates but hoarse and raw screams and sounds that hardly have any resemblance with actual words and their meaning.