Analysis of Familiar Places



Looking back at the journeys that I’ve made,
there is this strange sensation of feeling at home
at some of the visited places, right from the start.

I know it´s something in my heart, an older
stream that resides in shared memories,
a sense of belonging, confident and free.

As a child I liked to walk along fields and flows
all by myself, preferably with nothing on my feet,
just open to all randomness there to see and meet.

The same way, on flip flops, I thawed in Havana.
Landing in Siem Reap would set my spirit free again.
And I have felt like this when first arriving in Ghent.

Other places didn´t have such happy effect on me.
I didn’t feel soothed in Vienna, Jakarta, or Sandakan.
Nor in Bangkok, Berlin, Kuta, Cân To, or London .

The best familiar place to me, however, is ahead,
and its track uncertain, except for the flow of my heart.
I´m on my way to your island, loving it from the start.


Scheme XXA XXB XCC DXX BDX XAA
Poetic Form
Metre 1011010111 111101011011 1110100101101 111110011110 110101100 01101010001 101111101101 1111000110111 1101110011101 011111110010 1001111110101 0111111101001 10101111100111 1111001001011 1001011111110 0101011110101 01101001101111 111111110101101
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 916
Words 188
Sentences 11
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 39
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 116
Words per stanza (avg) 28
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Submitted by ludy_b on January 16, 2022

Modified on March 05, 2023

56 sec read
11

Ludy Bührs

The topics she writes about are very diverse, so are the poetry styles she applies. As a Dutch translator and poet, having lived in Cambodia's capital city Phnom Penh for 2.5 years, in 2008 she published "Op de ruïnes van een rijk" (On the Ruins of an Empire) ISBN 978-90-8834-483-1 with 60 poems based on her experiences there. In 2007 she received a Certificate of Accomplishment as one of The Best Poems and Poets of 2007 issued by poetry.com and the International Library of Poetry for her poem Choked Truth, her own translation of "Verstikte waarheid", one of the poems in the book. Born in 1956, she still works as an independent translator, translating from English into Dutch. more…

All Ludy Bührs poems | Ludy Bührs Books

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