Man who made Amsterdam 'magic centre' dies
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/man-who-made-amsterdam-magic-centre-dies
12 July 2009
Poet and author Simon Vinkenoog, who had been known as Amsterdam's
"weed ambassador" since the 1960s, has died aged 80, his family said
on Sunday. He had been ill for some time, having undergone a leg
amputation and suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage.
His first volume of poems, entitled Wondkoorts ("Traumatic Fever"),
appeared in 1950; one of his last works was a bundle of translations
of Allen Ginsberg's poetry, Me and my peepee (2001). Twenty years
earlier he had also turned his attention to the American Beat Poets
of the 1950s, publishing Jack Kerouac in Amsterdam. Vinkenoog loved
the city where he was born and where he lived, as he expressed in his
ode to his native town Am*dam Madmaster, published last year.
In 2004 Simon Vinkenoog was elected Poet of the Fatherland (Dutch
poet laureate), a position which he held until 2005.
Drugs advocate
Vinkenoog was an advocate of recreational drugs use, as illustrated
by titles like How to Enjoy Reality (1968). He often appeared in
public, reciting his poetry. One of his most recent appearances was
in 2007, when he lent his support to a demonstration in Amsterdam
against a proposed ban on magic mushrooms. In the 2006 general
elections, he was a figurehead candidate for a small party which
promoted the legalisation of cannabis. The party did not succeed in
winning any seats in the Lower House.
In addition to his purely literary work, Vinkenoog wrote profusely
about his experiences with drugs. Esoteric magazine Bres published an
apparently never-ending series of articles, starting with an
exploration of LSD in 1968, and ending in 2004.
1960s fading away
With the death of Simon Vinkenoog Amsterdam loses one more of its
iconic ambassadors of the Swinging 'Sixties (1960s), when the Dutch
capital gained its reputation as a drugs-friendly Magic Centre, which
it has managed to retain to this day. Earlier this year, performance
artist Robert Jasper Grootveld died. Grootveld was known for his
large-scale open-air ceremonies in the mid-sixties in which he mocked
bourgeois hypocrisy.
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