Kerwin the Poem

In 1985 a statue, Mama Baranka, was dedicated to Kerwin's memory in the Vondelpark. It was sculpted in bronze by Antillian artist Nelson Carrilho. The night before the unveiling, a group of people sat watch around the statue to ensure that it was not vandalized.

As dawn broke one of this group, the poet Maurice Di, felt he heard the voice of Kerwin speaking to him and thus the poem was born.

Over the years the poem has been translated in many different languages and continues to grow. The printed edition is distributed free of charge at the 20 August commemoration of Kerwin's death.

***

On this site we will gradually bring as many of these translations as we can, together with information about the languages and, where possible, sound files.

This will forever remain a work in progress. We welcome new contributions - we have only a fraction of the world's languages (estimated to be anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000).

On these pages we have placed dialects as sub-sets to the main language, so to find the Limburg translation, begin at the Dutch page and look on the list of dialects on the list at the right.

Languages already available are in red, those in white exist in print and will be uploaded in due course.

***

For more information, or to send translations we do not not yet have please write to kerwin.poem@xs4all.nl

nothing is more important than stopping fascism because fascism will stop us all