A Media-Specific Analysis of Candlelight Poetry on the Radio. The World’s Longest-running Radio Poetry Show

ABSTRACT

Since 1967 Jan van Veen has been reciting poems for the Dutch radio program Candlelight, the world’s longest-running radio poetry show. Candlelight poems almost always contain end rhymes and revolve around emotional themes. This article examines Candlelight poetry specifically as radio poetry. Three aspects are explored: the wide reach, the accessibility and the meaningful relationship between the linguistic and material code of the poems. The results of a survey conducted among Candlelight listeners are presented. And a material reading is given of a Candlelight poem, recited during a memorial broadcast on the MH17 plane crash in Ukraine in 2014.

According to The Guardian, “Poetry Please” on BBC Radio 4 is “the world’s longest-running radio poetry show” (Dee, 2013). However, in 2019, ´Poetry Please´ had run for forty years, while in that very same year the Dutch poetry radio program Candlelight had already been airing for fifty-two years.¹ In the latter program radio DJ Jan van Veen (b. 1944) reads poems written and sent in by listeners. The poems are often submitted anonymously, and although Van Veen has never communicated any guidelines, they almost always contain end rhymes and revolve around major emotional themes, such as falling in love, heartbreak, loss and mourning. These topics match the program’s title – the English word “candlelight” is what the program is called, thus not a Dutch equivalent – which emphasizes the fact that the poems are broadcasted in the evening and at night. The title also is evocative of romantic dinners and of memorials, which match the two main topics of the poems recited by Jan van Veen: love and mourning.

Van Veen always recites the “Candlelight poems,” written by amateur poets, to the same background music – Mantovani’s version of “Greensleeves” – and with the same distinctive deep voice and style of recitation. 2019 marked the 100^th anniversary of the first public radio broadcast in the Netherlands, which means that Jan van Veen has not only been broadcasting poems written by listeners for more than half a century but also more than fifty percent of the time that Dutch public radio has existed.

2019 was also the last year that Candlelight’s show was broadcasted on the radio, after many switches between various Dutch radio stations, since its very first broadcast in 1967.² For a few years, there were rumors that Jan van Veen would return with a new version of Candlelight, but in 2022 it became clear that the popular program would not be returning to the radio waves. Not to the traditional radio, that is, as Van Veen still broadcasts Candlelight Radio online. On this website, music is played day and night, seven days a week. From Monday to Friday evenings Van Veen recites poems between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., registering more than 150,000 monthly visitors in 2008 (Anon., 2008). In addition, Van Veen places five audio recordings of poems he has recited online every week, to which visitors have unlimited access. Additionally, he selects a ‘Poem of the week.³ Enthusiasts can also indulge themselves in the more than twenty anthologies that Van Veen has published over the years with Candlelight poems that he has recited on the radio.

In 2016, the Flemish literary scholar Dirk De Geest paid attention to Candlelight poetry from an academic perspective for the first time in the history of the program (De Geest, 2016). However, he did this by focusing solely on the written form of the poems; his case study was the Candlelight anthology 30 Years Candlelight: The 100 Most Beautiful Poems [30 jaar Candlelight: de 100 mooiste gedichten], which Van Veen published in 1997 through the publishing house Mingus in Baarn. De Geest sees the program as part of “a thriving field of amateur poets that is barely acknowledged or at best casually mentioned by established literary critics and scholars” (De Geest, 2016, p. 218).⁴ He is particularly interested in the position of the poems and the poets in the literary field and he concludes that “neither the initiators nor the participating poets themselves [have] any frustration with their unenviable literary position” (De Geest, 2016, p. 220).

The only existing academic publication on Candlelight poems thus completely disregards the original medium of those poems; De Geest only writes about the poetry in printed form. However, it is important to examine Candlelight poetry within the medium for which the poems are written and in which they are most often experienced: as radio poetry. This is a term that Mike Ladd defines as “poetry that is intended to be received via broadcast” (Ladd, 2011, p. 165). In this article I therefore present for the first time an academic perspective on Candlelight poetry as poetry for the radio. I will argue that there are three reasons why it is essential to consider Candlelight poetry specifically as radio poetry: the wide reach of the poems, the accessibility of the poems, and the meaningful relationship between the linguistic and material code of Candlelight poems on the radio. In the first two parts I will refer to the results of a survey that I conducted in collaboration with Jan van Veen among people who listen to the poetry radio program Candlelight.⁵ And in the last part I will present a material reading of a Candlelight poem, to show how the medium assigns meaning to the poetry.

Throughout the article I will place emphasis on the listeners, by giving them a voice via the survey and by choosing their perspectives – in combination with a material perspective – on the poems. Through these choices I am underlining the fact that, as Kate Lacey has stated about listeners in general and radio listeners in particular, “falling silent to listen is not a sign of passivity, nor an act of submission, but is an active part of the communication process” (Lacey, 2013, p. 47).

After a period of most scholarly attention for radio poetry seemingly going to English language poetry on the radio, with often – but not always – a focus on highbrow modernist poets in the UK and the US in the first half of the 20^th century (see for example Avery, 2006; Chasar, 2012; Houglum, 2008; Selch, 1999; Wheeler, 2008), we have now seemed to have arrived at a scholarly phase with a much broader focus. In the last decade attention has for example been given to radio poetry by women in Argentina and Uruguay in the 1930ʹs, 1940ʹs and 1950ʹs (Ehrick, 2015), Polish radio poetry in the 1930ʹs (Wróbel, 2017) and Jamaican radio poetry in the 1940ʹs (Cyzewski, 2018). Others have explored the relationship between radio and contemporary poetry, such as contemporary feminist poetry broadcasted in South Africa (Molebatsi, 2019), contemporary Siday – which is poetry in the Bisayan-Waray language – on the radio in the Philippines (Tenasas, 2020), contemporary poetry of the Somali people broadcasted in the Horn of Africa (Andrzejewski, 2011) and publications that combine the study of historical and contemporary radio poetry in different countries and languages (Street, 2012). I am the first to academically focus on contemporary popular Dutch poetry broadcasted in the Netherlands.

The Wide Reach

The first reason why Candlelight poetry should specifically be regarded as radio poetry is because radio has had an immense impact on the reach and popularity of the poems. The great fame of Candlelight poetry – the renowned Dutch dictionary Van Dale even includes the term ‘candlelight poem’⁶ – and the wide distribution of Candlelight poetry between 1967 and 2019 on the radio and to this day online, are directly linked to the medium and the radio presenter Jan van Veen. Van Veen presented several radio programs throughout his career, he was closely involved in the rise of pop music in the Netherlands and released several successful singles himself, but he is best known as “Mr. Candlelight.”⁷ It all started in 1967, when Jan van Veen decided to recite a poem on Radio Veronica – as a “joke” – which had been written and sent in by a listener (Anon, 2022).⁸ Technician Ad Bouman chose Italian conductor Annunzio Paolo Mantovani’s version of the musical piece “Greensleeves” to accompany Van Veen’s recital. Their colleagues loved the poetry reading (Haagmans, 1991, p. 2) and also the listeners reacted enthusiastically. “A day after the first broadcast, I received 25 letters with poems,” Van Veen remembers. “A week later one hundred letters arrived and after another week a whole bag full” (Kok, 2011).

In 1971 Van Veen switched to Radio Hilversum 3. There, Candlelight gained national reach for the first time and the program became the best-listened evening radio program in the Netherlands, with around 900,000 listeners per broadcast and about 600 poems sent in each week (Van Dijl, 1976, p. 6; Anon, 1978, p. 8; Hunfeld, 1988, p. 13).⁹ In 1992 Candlelight moved to Sky Radio and the fans followed, which meant a quarter of all radio listeners on Monday evenings in the Netherlands listened to Candlelight at that time (Van den Berg, 2003). In 2003 Sky Radio decided to put an end to Candlelight and in 2005 Van Veen launched the website Candlelight.nl, “driven by the many letters and requests” (Anon, 2022). By doing so, he was one of the first Dutch radio makers with an own internet station (Otto, 2017).

After three years, Van Veen once again found a home for Candlelight on the radio: from 2008 onwards he recited poems on the radio station 100% NL and in 2019 he switched to Omroep Max (Anon., 2018a). However, after four episodes, the collaboration was already stopped, according to Omroep Max due to the “unworkable situation” that arose from the disagreement between Van Veen and the radio’s music editor (Takken, 2019; Tienhooven, 2019). Since then Candlelight can only be listened to via the online radio station Candlelight Radio, which is the most popular online radio station in the Netherlands without an affiliation to a national radio station (Anon, 2021, p. 7).

The importance of the program to its listeners became especially apparent when it was announced in 2003 that Candlelight would stop being broadcasted. Van Veen received piles of poems about how unfortunate the listeners found that decision (Hageman, 2003). For example, on January 22, 2003, Van Veen read the following poem by an anonymous listener, which was printed in its entirety in the national Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant on 27^th January of that year:

Faithfully I thank him who spoke our word

He who shared joy and sorrow with us

A voice that gave meaning to our feelings

I thank him for gently stroking my heart

A certain emptiness will arise for me now

A programme so emotional and self-evident

But luckily I have many of the shows on cassette tapes

Although I had not counted on a goodbye for a long time

Thank you for all the support I found in you

I now say goodbye with a silent tear

Everything passes, nothing stays the same

We all have to go our own way now (Van den Berg, 2003)¹⁰

This poem expresses the experience listeners had. They felt that Van Veen shared emotions through the Candlelight poems and that he provided support to other listeners. The line “Thank you for all the support I found in you” indicates that the lyrical subject found support not only in Van Veen and his voice (“A voice that gave meaning to our feelings”), but also in the authors of the poems that were read. In that respect, Van Veen’s voice was only the bearer of that support and the mediator between listeners.

It should be noted that the written form of Candlelight poems has also contributed to the popularity of the Candlelight poetry phenomenon. Van Veen published twenty-three collections of Candlelight poems, of which more than 120,000 copies were sold in 2002 (Wigman, 2002, p. 6). However, those numbers are dwarfed by the number of listeners who listened to the poems during the fifty-two years that the program was broadcasted on the radio. In addition, the survey that Jan van Veen and I conducted among Candlelight listeners shows that most respondents (83%) have never purchased a Candlelight anthology.

So, who are those listeners who have made Candlelight poetry such a huge success? In 2017, during the 50^th anniversary of Candlelight, I conducted a survey among Candlelight listeners in collaboration with Jan van Veen.¹¹ This was the first study ever conducted on that target group. The Candlelight listener has an average age of 53 years (SD 14). Nearly a third of the respondents (33%) listen to nearly every broadcast of Candlelight online and a slightly smaller group (28%) listen to nearly every broadcast of Candlelight on the radio. A relatively large group of respondents is therefore a very frequent listener and thus hears nearly all poems which Van Veen recites.

The respondents consisted of 57% men, 42% women and 1% people who describe their gender as other. These results contrast with Candlelight’s reputation as a “women’s programme” made for and by “stay-at-home-moms” (Van Strien, 1996, p. 4).

The survey also reveals at which locations and during which time periods people listen to Candlelight. People mainly listen to the program at home, in the living room (54%). Second place is at home, in bed (20%) and number three is at work (8%). It is also striking that a relative great number of people chose the open “Other” and indicated there that they listened to the program in the car (5% of all respondents filled this in).

Most respondents never write poetry (57%) and never attend a literary event (68%). Almost half of the respondents never read a poetry collection (46%) or poetry on the internet (45%). So, apparently there is something about poetry on the radio that attracts them more than poetry in other media.

Additionally, there is reason to believe that Candlelight poetry has had an even greater impact on how people view the entire genre of poetry in the Netherlands than on the listeners of Van Veen’s program alone. Candlelight poetry is such a well-known phenomenon that even people who have never listened to a broadcast of the program know and recognize its typical combination of poetry style, voice and music. In other words, Candlelight poetry is part of the collective memory of the Netherlands. Proof of this are the many references to Candlelight poems in Dutch cultural history: ask an average Dutch adult to recite a poem on the spot and they will most probably mimic Jan van Veen’s voice. When someone recites a poem on the Dutch radio or television, or in a Dutch comedy show, the characteristic Candlelight music is regularly added. Also, many Dutch comedians have incorporated parodies of the poems recited by Van Veen in their performances¹² and literary critics regularly use the words “Candlelight poem” to show their disapproval of poetry collections by recognized poets (Van der Starre, 2021, p. 350).

Accessibility

The second reason why it is essential to consider Candlelight poetry specifically as radio poetry is the fact that the medium has made poetry accessible, not only because listening to the radio is a cultural experience that is free and widely distributed across classes (both things that are opposingly different with regards to books), but also because listening to poems appears to be more accessible than reading poems. In fact, among contemporary Dutch adults, listening to poetry is much more common than reading poems: 61% of adults in the Netherlands come into contact with poetry while listening to the radio. This positions listening to poetry on the radio in the ninth place in the list of ways in which adults come into contact with poetry in the Netherlands (Van der Starre 2017, p. 18). Among Dutch adults, 19% frequently experience listening to poetry on the radio (which means once a month or more often). This puts radio in the fifth place in the list of frequent poetry experiences among adults in the Netherlands (43).

Interestingly enough, the very first sound recording has everything to do with poetry. In 1877 Thomas Edison recorded sound for the first time in history.¹³ Unfortunately, that recording did not survive the passing of time, but in 1926, in a new recording, he repeated what he had said that very first time: “The first words I spoke in the original phonograph. A little piece of practical poetry. Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.”¹⁴ Thus, the very first words ever recorded, leading humanity into what Walter Ong famously named “secondary orality” (Ong, 1982), were poetry. Just like the first sound recording of a famous person: in April 1889 “The Edison Talking Machine” made a recording of Robert Browning reciting his poem “How They Brought The Good News” during a party at painter Rudolf Lehmann’s house (Piepenbring, 2015).¹⁵

Nowadays, the younger¹⁶ someone is, the more often someone listens to poetry on the radio in the Netherlands (Van der Starre 2017, p. 19). This result once again emphasizes the important role of radio in making poetry accessible to a young audience. Several Dutch radio programs aimed at young people include poetry performances by their “own” poet (called a “huisdichter” in Dutch, a “house poet”). In 2007, the Dutch poet Ingmar Heytze talked about being a “house poet” for the 3FM morning radio program GIEL:

What I like about Giel’s show is that he really reaches almost everyone, including a lot of people who normally do not read or listen to poems. The fact that you get the chance to talk about poetry on the radio doesn’t automatically mean that anyone is interested, but afterwards they always show me the e-mails and text messages that came in during the broadcast: literally dozens of enthusiastic reactions. Suppose that one in a hundred people who like the poem take the trouble to send a message, that means you have done thousands of people a pleasure by reading a poem on the radio. There are worse things you can do, early in the morning (Gulden, 2007)!

Heytze’s optimism about the radio’s potential for poetry is very different from the criticism that the combination of radio and poetry received in the 20^th century, especially in the period when the medium was new. Some scholars viewed radio as the medium that would “save” poetry – Charles Glicksberg, for example, was convinced “[r]adio would give poetry back to the people” (Glicksberg, 1941, p. 93) – but not everyone was enthusiastic about “bardcasting,” as the American scholar Milton Allen Kaplan called the reading of poetry on the radio in 1949 (Chasar, 2012, p. 89). Dutch literary scholar Jeroen Dera states that critics developed a “sacred rhetoric” during the rise of radio: “a discourse in which they presented themselves as the guardians of a profane, literary culture which was being threatened by the superficiality and speed of a new medium.” (Dera, 2017, p. 34) An example of this rhetoric is the essay that the American poet and literary critic Harriet Monroe published in 1930 in the magazine Poetry under the title “The Radio and the Poets,” in which she criticizes the combination of the genre and the medium, and the selection of poets who recite on the radio:

I very seldom listen in, not being a radio fan. But it has been borne in upon me in various ways of late, that the poets of quality and standing are not being broadcast, while numerous impossibles are reading their maudlin verses to invisible audiences of millions (Monroe, 1930, p. 33).

There was also aversion to the new medium in the Netherlands. Good taste and the mass media were at odds with each other. Dutch poet Anton van Duinkerken, for example, feared that a type of “popular radio poetry” would emerge, comparable to the poetry of the early 19^th century (Dera, 2017, p. 136). Another example of the skeptical view on radio poetry is the June 1925 meeting of the Dutch Society of Lettermen on the possibilities and dangers of radio to literature: “‘Several members saw in the present fad for radio something transient, others regarded it as a great danger in this all-mechanising age, a characteristic of the mental laziness and the coarsening of taste.’ Some also feared that the public would exchange the book for the radio” (Quoted in Ham, 2015, p. 188).

Candlelight poetry not only endured this type of specific criticism concerning the medium, but also criticism aimed at the type of poems that were recited. As mentioned before, the Van Dale dictionary refers to “Candlelight poems” as “inferior poetry,” among other things. Jan van Veen is aware of this. In interviews he indicates that he finds comprehensibility very important when selecting the poems and that aspect is what he misses when he reads “so-called real poetry” (Hageman, 2003).

The survey shows that Candlelight listeners, just like Van Veen, find the comprehensibility of the poems to be the most important aspect of Candlelight poetry (average 7.3; SD 2.4). It is clear that listeners appreciate the accessibility and clarity of the poems. They also want to be moved by the poems (average 6.8; SD 2.5) and they want to be invited to ponder (average 6.7; SD 2.5).

64% of the respondents indicate that listening to a poem during Candlelight has helped them, for example by comforting them during heartbreak or after the loss of a loved one.

Almost half of the respondents (45%) have suspected that a poem that Jan van Veen recited during Candlelight was written especially for them. The chance that this is indeed the case, is very small. This high percentage indicates that Candlelight poems directly appeal to many listeners. The anonymous nature of many of the poems (“This poem was written by A. and is especially for L. from the city of N.”) probably plays a role here, as does the general theme of the poems. The fact that a large part of the poems are written in the second person singular (which is the traditional lyrical form) can also contribute to the fact that many listeners feel addressed. Van Veen is aware of this power of the poems. “The listeners recognise the writer’s feelings or think it was written especially for them,” he said in 2018 (Anon, 2018b).

Paradoxically, the aspect that makes Candlelight poems so very popular seems to be at the same time the aspect that receives the most criticism, namely the frequent use of clichés. This aspect can be found in the use of standard sayings, expressions and metaphors. The ending rhyme also plays a role in the critical view on clichés in Candlelight poetry. According to critics, many of the poems include forced rhyming, predictability and unoriginal word choices. However, the use of clichés and ending rhyme – which is also a kind of cliché – contributes to the recognizability and therapeutic effect of Candlelight poetry. It is precisely these platitudes that can ensure that listeners identify with the poem’s theme and emotions (Scheepstra, 1988, 1990). In addition, generalities allow listeners to suspect that certain Candlelight poems are about them or written especially for them. The ending rhyme enhances the predictability of the poems, which can evoke recognition and confirmation among listeners.

Moreover, this recognition and confirmation makes Candlelight poems accessible and useful for teachers to use at school. Jacques de Vroomen, secondary school teacher of Dutch, wrote a column about Candlelight poetry in 2002 in Tsjip/Letteren, a Dutch magazine for teachers. His experiences with using Candlelight poems in class are telling for the accessibility of the poems. For a lesson on literature for 16 and 17 year olds, he had copied a few poems from Candlelight’s 19^th anthology and brought along a cassette tape on which he had recorded Jan van Veen reciting the poems on the radio. He also selected some poems by the well-known and canonical Dutch poets Martinus Nijhoff and Rutger Kopland. “I would hand those poems out a little later in class,” he had thought in advance, “when it becomes clear what kind of rubbish Jan van Veen has to offer.” The lesson, however, did not go as planned:

In the end, what I had brought along as ‘serious poetry’ did not leave my bag, because my students’ reaction to the Candlelight poetry completely turned my didactic planning upside down. ‘Stupid, silly, useless, sentimental,’ is how I thought they would judge those poems. We would then clarify their disapproval in a class discussion on poor language, highly sought-after rhymes, no formative power, everything too straightforward and so on. And we would then take a look at how differently Nijhoff’s and Kopland’s poems work. But there was no criticism. Rather, they expressed a feeling of relief and liberation: ‘Sir, finally these are poems that are not too difficult, poems we understand. Can’t we do that more often in literature class?’ I was didactically flabbergasted – they loved the Candlelight poems. It was a disconcerting experience for me, because what had I actually been doing in all those previous lessons and in all those years? (De Vroomen, 2002, p. 31)

The “relief and liberation” De Vroomen’s students expressed when listening to and reading the Candlelight poems, indicate that they experienced these poems in a radically different way than the ones normally discussed in class. De Vroomen concludes: “In order to be able to grow later in life, a seed has to be sown at school. But that has to be done with respect for what they really think and feel” (De Vroomen, 2002, p. 31). The way the students reacted, offers an insight into the way in which many people, not only students, experience Candlelight poetry. As the survey results indicate, many find it important that Candlelight poems are understandable and moving. And many find that the oral form contributes to this experience.

Material Code

The third reason why Candlelight poetry should be specifically considered as radio poetry is the way in which the medium assigns meaning to the poetry. Meaning is not only created by the linguistic elements of a poem, but also by the material carrier. As the American media and literary scholar N. Katherine Hayles states, a “media-specific analysis” is “a mode of critical attention which recognizes that all texts are instantiated and that the nature of the medium in which they are instantiated matters” (Hayles, 2004, p. 67). According to Hayles, this type of analysis is important in literary theory because it ensures that the role of the text’s materiality is also taken into account in discussions on “meaning.”

In my material readings – of which I give an example in the second half of this article – I call the linguistic elements of a text (such as the number of words and the sound of the words) “the linguistic code” and the material elements (such as the material carrier and the design of the words) “the material code.” I base this terminology on the theory explained in Material Modernism: The Politics of the Page (2001) by the American literary scholar George Bornstein (Bornstein, 2001). Like Hayles and Bornstein, I consider it essential to recognize the role of the medium in the process of meaning creation.

Poetry, like all kinds of texts, needs both a linguistic and a material code in order to exist and both codes play a role in the development of a possible meaning of a poem. For example, if a poem has been included in a funeral announcement, the material code of that announcement can cause someone to read that poem as a text about death, while if the exact same poem is read on a wall along the coast, the material code can give reason to understand the text as a poem about the sea. The fact that the meaning of a poem can change while the material code changes and the linguistic code remains exactly the same, shows that it is not only the linguistics code, but also the material code that assigns meaning to a text.

In Candlelight poetry, the material code of the radio plays a role in various ways. Firstly, the voice of the presenter is very important. The survey results clearly show that listeners value the reading of the poems by Jan van Veen particularly highly: more than half of the respondents (56%) indicated that “The reading by Jan van Veen” is what they value most about the radio poems.¹⁷ Van Veen’s voice (the material code) often reflects the emotion that is expressed in the linguistic code of the poems. His voice has been the characteristic carrier of the poems for more than fifty years. The “sweet-voiced” (Scheepstra, 1988), “warm” (Scheepstra, 1990), “dark brown” (Takken 2019), “unmistakably heavy, low, almost humming” (Bruls, 2010), “worn, dark” (Koelewijn, 2014) voice that “skilfully vibrates with emotion” (Haagmans, 1991, p. 2), is thus the most characteristic aspect of the program.

Van Veen talks about reciting Candlelight poems as an art and a craft. In the first decade of the program, he says he spent about six hours preparing for each broadcast (Van Dijl, 1976, p. 6). According to him, the most important thing is: “Silence. The pauses. The commas. The feeling you put into it.” (Koelewijn, 2014) He often adds those pauses and commas to the poems himself. Prior to the reading, he places characters in the selected poems in order to make the reading successful (Hunfeld, 1988, p. 13).

Van Veen seems aware of the fact that his voice as a carrier of the poems influences the meaning of the poetry. When in 1988 interviewer Margriet Hunfeld confesses to having laughed while reading several of the poems in his Candlelight anthologies, Van Veen explains that reading the poems in silence is very different from listening to the poems. It truly matters whether he is the one who recites the poems and where this reciting happens. “Look, if I were to read it now, here, in my office, it would sound very differently. It might even sound like mocking. But as soon as I get to work, I really start using my voice and that voice has shaped itself in a certain direction over the years” (Idem).

The power of Jan Van Veen’s voice can also be found in the fact that it is only a voice, without an image; a conscious choice made by the presenter. Even during the television broadcasts of Candlelight (a few one-off shows in the 1980ʹs), Van Veen was “careful to stay out of the picture” because, in his opinion, as much as possible should be left to the viewers’ and listeners’ imagination (Anon., 1987). In all instances, his voice remains a “disembodied” and “deboned voice,” as the American literary and performance scholars Douglas Kahn and Charles Bernstein call voices on sound carriers (Kahn, 1992, p. 7; Bernstein, 1998, p. 10).

In the early days of the program, Van Veen performed the poems live on the radio. This changed during his stint with Sky Radio; he started recording the poems at home in advance, in “a studio with a living room atmosphere, completely cut off from the outside world” (Bruls, 2010, p. 33; Koelewijn, 2014). Nevertheless, Van Veen continued to give the impression on the radio that his poetry recitals were live (Van den Berg, 2003). A big advantage of recording the poems in advance was that Van Veen could correct any errors during the recital. A disadvantage was that Van Veen no longer had control over the rest of the broadcast; Sky Radio’s music coordinator chose which songs were broadcasted between the poems. “I would play very different things myself,” Van Veen said at the time (Idem).

The embedding of the poems in a radio program with music has to do with a second important aspect of the material code of Candlelight poetry, namely the entire radio program as context of the poetry. In 1976, Van Veen said that he chose the music based on the poems he recited during the program, not the other way around, and explained: “It takes a lot of time. You have to find appropriate music. For example, you can’t suddenly throw in a rock song by The Troggs, because people will sit up straight in their beds.” (Van Dijl, 1976, p. 6)

According to the presenter, the popularity of Candlelight is related to the way in which he combines poetry with music. In his words, this combination is the “golden formula” (Van den Berg, 2003). After Sky Radio canceled his program, Van Veen started negotiating with other several radio stations and some things turned out to be very important to him. In any case, he wanted to “regain control over the music that is played between the poems,” because according to him the poems need a certain kind of “Candlelight music” to do them justice (Hageman, 2003), referring to the mix of romantic pop classics from the 1970ʹs and 80ʹs and the “easy listening” songs on the hit charts of that moment.

In addition, the program has a number of musical “motives,” which characterize the program. The signature tune is “Can I Get There By Candlelight” (1968) by the Irish David McWilliams, a song that relates both to the title of the program and to the listening space of some listeners: the car. In addition, the poems are ushered in with the opening bars of the song “Greensleeves” (1958) or the song “The Green Leaves of Summer” (1961), both in Mantovani’s version, on which the rest of the poem is then also recited. The regular ending tune is “Goodnight” (1968) by The Beatles, with which Van Veen says goodbye to his listeners.

Other parts of the paratexts of the poems also enter into a relationship with the poetry, such as the commercials and the news. The news mainly enters into a relationship with the poems when there are substantive similarities. This has happened many times over the years. From the start of the program, Van Veen regularly receives poems about major events, which he often chooses to recite on the radio. In 1976 he said that “a lot of drama about world problems” was sent in, in 1987 he received poems about Chernobyl, from 2001 onwards poems were submitted on “9/11 and world peace” and in 2017 he received many poems about Anne Faber, a 25 year old student who was kidnapped, raped and murdered near Utrecht – a police case that dominated the Dutch news that year (Van Dijl, 1976, p. 6; Anon., 1987; Van den Berg, 2003; Otto, 2017). By reciting poems about current events, some Candlelight broadcasts take the form of collective therapy. “I try to create an atmosphere in which there is room for human feelings and emotions,” he stated (Haagmans, 1991, p. 2).

When Van Veen recites poems that are about current affairs, the material code and the linguistic code of Candlelight poetry become entangled. An example of this is the special Candlelight broadcast on July 23, 2014 about the MH17 crash: the Malaysia Airlines passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down on July 17, 2014. All 283 passengers (of which 193 Dutch citizens) and 15 crew (all Malaysian citizens) were killed. Wreckage of the aircraft fell near Hrabove in Ukraine, close to the Ukraine-Russia border. The shoot-down occurred during the War in Donbas, in an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels. The day of the special Candlelight broadcast was a day of national mourning in the Netherlands. In that broadcast, Van Veen recited poems by listeners that thematically matched the news broadcasts in the program. In the following paragraph I will present a material reading of a poem from that broadcast. My aim is to show how the material code of the poetry assigns meaning to that poetry – a process that in this case is inextricably linked to the medium of radio.

A Material Reading of the Poem “Immersed in Mourning” by the Poet “Sadness”

On Wednesday July 23, 2014, a special MH17 broadcast of Candlelight could be heard on Radio 100% NL from 11 pm to midnight.¹⁸ The hour starts with an Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau (ANP) (General Dutch Press Agency) news broadcast, in which Robin Velderman reads the news bulletin in five parts, which he distinguishes with pauses and audible inhalations. The five parts are respectively about the victims’ coffins that are transported from Charkov in Ukraine via Eindhoven to Hilversum in the Netherlands; the procession of 10,000ʹs of people standing along the road as a tribute (and the fact that CNN compared this sight to J.F. Kennedy’s funeral); a silent march in Amsterdam; a church service in Amersfoort; and a council of ministers in The Hague about the aftermath of the plane crash and a resolution for a UN police mission in Ukraine.

The MH17 crash is so topical, widespread and important at that moment in time, that the entire news broadcast, except for the weather forecast, is devoted to that one topic and the phrase “the plane crash” is enough for all listeners to understand what the bulletin is about. Both the linguistic and the material code of the news items contain an overload of factuality and very little to no emotion. The emotions only play a role in an indirect and descriptive way, such as in the observations that 10,000ʹs of people stood along the funeral procession route and gathered for the silent march. Velderman reads the text in a formal and business-like voice, in which the informative function of language predominates. The “objectivity” of the reporting is somewhat disturbed when Velderman states that CNN spoke of “true class and dignity.” By presenting this value judgment as a quote, however, the reporting remains predominantly “neutral” and distant. The lack of references to the political aspects of the crash – including whether the plane was hit by a pro-Russian separatist surface-to-air missile or not – contributes to that apparent “neutrality.”

Immediately after the ANP news bulletin, a voice from Radio 100% NL introduces the presenter – “This is 100% NL. The music of the Netherlands. Until midnight: Jan van Veen’s Candlelight” – and a short 100% NL jingle is heard. Then the music changes and Van Veen’s voice is broadcasted: “Today, Wednesday 23 July, a day of national mourning. The first victims have returned to the Netherlands. This is a special episode of Candlelight.” The distinctive voice and the typical pauses create a drama in the text that is no different from other Candlelight episodes. However, the message that this is a “special episode” is exceptional, just like the fact that Van Veen’s intro fits in so seamlessly with the ANP news bulletin, which ended only eleven seconds before. The cheerful and happy sounds of “Can I Get There By Candlelight” by David McWilliams, the song with which every Candlelight broadcast opens, sound contradictory as background music for Van Veen’s introductory text; a text which is emotionally charged in both the linguistic and material code.

Immediately after Van Veen’s words, Claudia de Breij’s Dutch song “Mag ik dan bij jou?” (“Can I Then Come To You?”) is started, a song that was linked to the plane crash at that time; recorded in 2009, it was played so often after the crash that it became popular again. In addition, the number indirectly enters into a relationship with part of the news bulletin; Reverend Jannie Nijwening opened the church service in Amersfoort, which Velderman spoke about, by reading parts of De Breij’s lyrics (Havermans, 2015).

After the meaningful song, the recognizable opening notes of “Greensleeves” by Mantovani sound, on which Van Veen introduces the first poem of the broadcast after eight seconds. In the transcriptions of Van Veen’s texts, I indicate with line breaks where he pauses and I use commas to indicate shorter breaks. The introduction goes like this:

There are no wordsFor the plane crash, involving flight MH17Which victimised innocent passengers and crew membersLeaving all their relatives in deep mourningThere is, however, the small consolationThat the bond between the bereaved and their deceased loved ones extends beyond the horizon in the UkraineThe memory of themStrengthens this bond[Ten second pause, in which ‘Greensleeves’ can be heard.]‘Immersed in mourning’A poem, for all the victims’ next of kin, written under the pseudonym ‘Sadness’

What is striking about this poem’s paratext, is the fact that it begins with the observation that there are “no words” for what has happened, when it is precisely words that are used to capture the events. Because it is unclear whether this paratext was written by Van Veen himself or by the author of the poem (for example from an accompanying e-mail or letter), we cannot state with certainty whether this is a question of a quasi-modesty formula by performer or the poet. In both cases, however, in a contradictory way, this introductory remark deprives and grants the poem its right to exist, by subsequently presenting the poem to an audience anyway. The article “the” accompanying “Ukraine” seems old-fashioned, referring to the time when the country was still part of the Soviet Union. The paratext also contains a lot of imagery, which can be seen as a preview of the many metaphors in the poem that will follow. Van Veen makes clear that the text he will recite is a poem, as he often does in his announcements. Moreover, as is often the case, the poem is dedicated to someone. In this case not a lover or an ex-lover, but a group of people in the Netherlands: the victims’ next of kin. The pseudonym “Sadness” matches the atmosphere that has so far prevailed in the broadcast perfectly and functions as a combination of a concretization and a personification of the emotion that is so central to this day of national mourning and that will turn out to be the main theme of the poem. The poem that Van Veen recites goes as follows:

We try to carry the shock

The pain

That cuts through your soul

The deep sadness

The big hole in your heart

That the loss of all these loved ones has struck

Together with you, the bereaved

We listen to your experience, of the cruel fate

That hit innocent passengers

As victims of war, between fighting parties

In the remote regions of Ukraine

We listen to every memory

Of family members and friends who were snatched away

So alive and colourful

Which, through your veil of mourning

Drenched in tears

Offers a little warmth

We walk with you

In your procession

The way of a dignified goodbye

In front, our lion salutes

A tribute to all who perished

He is wearing, all the names, on a black belt

Symbol

Of national mourning, in the Netherlands

Poetic techniques that can be found in the poem are rhyme (in the Dutch original: geslagen-dragen, partijen-contreien, doordrenkt-schenkt, band-Nederland) which is ending rhyme because of Van Veen’s pauses; assonance (pijn-snijdt, ziel-diepe-verdriet, verlies-dierbaren, dierbaren-geslagen-samen-nabestaanden-dragen, schok-noodlot-trof) which in some cases is also ending rhyme; and alliteration (weg-waardig). In addition, imagery is very present. The lines “As victims of war, between fighting parties,” “A tribute to all who died” and “Symbol/Of national mourning, in the Netherlands” are the only parts of the poem that can be taken literally. The lyrical form that is so characteristic of Candlelight poems (an “I” addresses a “you” (single, in Dutch: “jij”) who does not speak back), has here been transformed into a version in the plural form (a “we” speaks to a “you” (plural, in Dutch: “jullie”) who does not speak back). This plural variation emphasizes the sense of community that prevails in the radio program in general and in this case in particular: the impact of the disaster was great and the day the poem was heard was a day of national mourning.¹⁹

The poem’s linguistic code partly overlaps with the linguistic code of the poem’s paratexts: the term “national mourning” also plays a role in Van Veen’s introduction of the “special Candlelight episode” at the very beginning of the program. The words “loved ones,” “mourning” and “bond” were also used in the poem’s introduction. And “relatives,” “passengers,” “victims” and “tribute” were also heard in the ANP news bulletin. A major difference between the poem recited by Van Veen and the news read by Velderman is that the poem is explicitly emotionally charged, while the news bulletin is predominantly “neutral” and formal. This difference can be found in both the linguistic and material code of the two texts. The poem contains emotional, charged and subjective words, which create meaning concerning the events, which are not presented by the news item, such as “shock,” “pain,” ‘deep sadness, “loss,” “cruel fate,” “snatched away,” “drenched in tears” and “perished.” The political aspects of the crash, which are not mentioned in the news, are also thematized in the poem. The lines “That hit innocent passengers/As victims of war, between fighting parties/In the remote regions of Ukraine” identify various elements that dominated the national and international news concerning the plane crash. This highlights a striking aspect that has characterized the combination of poetry and radio since its very beginning. “As literature had once defined itself against both politics and new media like radio,” Ian Whittington explains in the context of literary texts on the radio during the First World War, “it began to define itself through those politics and those new media” (Whittington, 2018, p. 5). Here, this Candlelight poem is not the type of propaganda radio poetry Whittington focuses on in his research, but it is indeed making meaning through specifically being a political radio poem.

With regard to the performance of the texts, the pauses and the emphasis on rhyming words by Van Veen create more emotion than in Velderman’s recital. Velderman’s pauses merely indicate when a new “paragraph” begins in the bulletin: a use of silence and breathing that aligns with the informative function of that text. The background music also attributes more emotion to the poem than the news bulletin. Moreover, the coinciding of the poem’s last line with ‘Greensleeves’s final chord gives the poem’s recital a “rounded” and “completed” character.

The lyrical form (in plural) of the poem discussed above, also deviates from the news item. The lines “We walk with you/In your procession” express what the poem in its entirety tries to do: to empathize with the emotions that the bereaved (the plural “you”) are going through and thereby making the listeners part of that experience (“We listen to every memory”). Those listeners have a dual position: on the one hand they are “eavesdropping” on the monologue which the “we” is performing toward the plural “you” – this eavesdropping is the standard situation within traditional lyricism – but on the other hand the listeners are part of the “we” who is speaking (which is unique within traditional lyricism). It is of course also possible that some listeners, if they really are the victim’s next of kin, identify with the addressee.²⁰ Those listeners are, in a sense, in a triple position, because in that case the addressed are actually being addressed in the pragmatic situation. As mentioned above, the survey found that nearly half of the respondents (45%) suspects that at least one Candlelight poem that Van Veen recited on the radio was written especially for them. There is a good chance this also happened during the recital of “Immersed in mourning.” This poem about a current event becomes part of that event through the material code. Additionally, through both the linguistic and the material code, the poem expresses emotions that remain implicit in the rest of the broadcast. Jan van Veen is an active mediator in this process. As a performer, he contributes to the meaning of the poem through voice and music and transfers emotion from poet to audience.

Conclusion

The three reasons why it is essential to consider Candlelight poetry specifically as radio poetry are intertwined: due to their medium and accessibility the poems have a wide reach and they carry a meaningful relationship between the linguistic and material code in them. The survey conducted among Candlelight listeners shows all three of these aspects are crucial among listening experiences, and the material reading of the Candlelight poem “Immersed in mourning” by the poet “Sadness” reveals how that meaning making happens through an interplay of the linguistic and material code. By close listening to Candlelight poems, and other popular radio poetry in lyrical forms, we can try to counter what Prithvi Varatharajan has called a lack of scholarship on the radio voice reading lyric poetry (Varatharajan, 2014). Scholarly attention will unveil the position, importance and meaning of poetry that has reached and moved people via radio throughout time, by virtue of, as a Candlelight listener wrote in a poem about Jan “Mr. Candlelight” van Veen himself, “A voice that gave meaning to our feelings.”

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) [Promoties in de Geesteswetenschappen].

Notes on contributors

Kila van der Starre

Kila van der Starre (1988) is a Dutch-British literary scholar and poetry critic. She works at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where she defended her dissertation Poëzie buiten het boek: De circulatie en het gebruik van poëzie (Poetry Off the Page: The Circulation and Use of Poetry) in 2021 (available online as an open access eBook, with an English summary). The dissertation was awarded the Praemium Erasmianum Dissertation Award, the OSL Dissertation Award and shortlisted for the Boekman Dissertation Award. Her research focuses on the ways people use poetry in their everyday lives, covering aspects such as poetry in public spaces, in funeral announcements, on Instagram, on bodies (poetry tattoos) and on the radio. In 2016 Kila van der Starre co-edited the book Dichters van het Nieuwe Millennium (Poets of the New Millennium) with Sarah Posman and Jeroen Dera. In 2017 she launched the crowdsourcing website Straatpoezie.nl, furthermore she published the research report Poëzie in Nederland (Poetry in The Netherlands).

Notes

1. Candlelight, however, has switched radio stations several times and was not broadcasted at all between 2003 and 2005. The Guardian later states that “Poetry Please” is “the longest running (and now probably only) poetry request show on any radio station anywhere in the world” (Dee, 2013) and with the addition of “request” this claim could be correct, as no poems are recited on request during Jan van Veen’s Candlelight programme.

2. 1967–1971: Radio Veronica. 1971 (3 months): Radio Noordzee. 1971–1992: Radio Hilversum 3. 1992–2003: Sky Radio. 2003–2005: not broadcasted on the radio. 2005: Jan van Veen starts online Radio Candlelight. 2008–2017: Radio 100% NL. 2017–2019: Omroep Max & Radio M.

3. https://candlelight.nl/audiogedichten/

4. All translations from Dutch to English in this article, including the poems, were done by the author of this article.

5. The first half of this article is based on chapter 7 of my dissertation: Poëzie buiten het boek: De circulatie en het gebruik van poëzie (with an English summary) (Van der Starre, 2021).

6. In 2005 the term “candlelight poem” was included in the Dutch Van Dale dictionary. The definition reflects the prevailing ideas about this type of poetry, in which simplicity, Van Veen’s recitation, rhyme, emotion and questionable quality play a key role: “simple poems written by listeners and [recited] with a sensitive diction” and “simple rhyming poem containing a direct expression of emotions, often regarded as inferior poetry by literary critics” (Van Dale, 2015).

7. Jan van Veen’s contribution to society was even recognized by the Dutch government in April 2009. The radio DJ was appointed Member of the Order of Orange-Nassau because he is “one of the people who deserve appreciation and recognition from society for the special way in which they have given meaning to their activities” (Knipschold, 2012).

8. The exact date of the broadcast in which Van Veen recited a poem for the first time is unknown, even to himself.

9. Some figures to contextualize these statistics: The Netherlands had 13,000,000 inhabitants in 1970, 14,000,000 in 1980 and today, in 2022, almost 17,500,000.

10. The original Dutch poem consists of the following ending rhyme scheme: ABCBDEDEFEGF.

11. At the end of 2017, 441 respondents completed the online survey. Van Veen invited his listeners to participate in the survey via a message on his website and an audio clip broadcasted on the online Candlelight Radio station. The survey consisted of thirty-nine questions about how often, where and why respondents listen to Candlelight on the radio and online, noting and sharing Candlelight poems, appreciation for different aspects of Candlelight poems, reading and writing poetry, visiting poetry events, which poets they consider good and bad and personal data. The method of distribution resulted in a bias in the study: the group of respondents is a mix of online and offline listeners, but mainly consists of online Candlelight listeners.

12. Herman Berkien, Robert Jensen, André van Duin, Frans Halsema and the children’s television series Purno de Purno made well-known parodies of Candlelight poetry, among others.

13. In any case, he was the first to patent this invention.

14. This recording can be listened to online, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnGsHx7QD2o

15. Unfortunately, after three lines, Browning forgot his lines, making the recording primarily a reminder of Browning’s forgetfulness. The poet died eight months later, making him the first person whose voice could be heard posthumously in an audio recording (Piepenbring, 2015).

16. The survey was conducted among respondents aged 18 years or older.

17. The emotion (22%) and the theme (7%) of the poems came in second and third place.

18. This material reading is based on a recording of the specific Candlelight broadcast in the Beeld en Geluid archive in Hilversum, the Netherlands (TaakID 5011476).

19. Wednesday 23 July was the first day of national mourning in the Netherlands since the death of Queen Wilhelmina in 1962.

20. To make clear what the impact of the MH17 crash had on the Dutch population: in the MH17 crash, the number of Dutch deaths constituted a higher percentage of the Dutch population in 2017 than the percentage of the US population that died during the 9/11 attacks in 2001.