Luuk Gruwez is a Flemish

Flanders

Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

. Since 1976, he lives in Hasselt

Hasselt

Hasselt is a Belgian city and municipality, and capital of the Flemish province of Limburg...

 where he worked until 1995 as a teacher.

Gruwez was born at Kortrijk

Kortrijk

Kortrijk ; , ; ) is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province West Flanders...

. He attended high school there at the Damiaancollege and graduated in Germanic philology at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

The Katholieke Universiteit Leuven is a Dutch-speaking university in Flanders, Belgium.It is located at the centre of the historic town of Leuven, and is a prominent part of the city, home to the university since 1425...

. In 1976 he moved from Kortrijk

Kortrijk

Kortrijk ; , ; ) is a Belgian city and municipality located in the Flemish province West Flanders...

 to Hasselt

Hasselt

Hasselt is a Belgian city and municipality, and capital of the Flemish province of Limburg...

. He earns a living as a teacher there until his career break in 1995 after being granted a scholarship as a writer.

Gruwez' work is sometimes considered to belong to the neoromantic

Neo-romanticism

The term neo-romanticism is used to cover a variety of movements in music, painting and architecture. It has been used with reference to very late 19th century and early 20th century composers such as Gustav Mahler particularly by Carl Dahlhaus who uses it as synonymous with late Romanticism...

 movement in response to the new realism

New realism

Nouveau réalisme refers to an artistic movement founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany and the painter Yves Klein during the first collective exposition in the Apollinaire gallery in Milan...

 of the 60s, with its typical emphasis on the emotions of life, love, disease, decay and death. But in Luuk Gruwez' work this kind of romance is always tempered by a portion of (self) irony

Irony

Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...

.

In his later poetry the subject matter is broader and his style becomes more narrative. He is now a full-time writer of poetry and prose as well as columns, appearing weekly in De Standaard

De Standaard

De Standaard is a Flemish daily newspaper published in Belgium by Corelio . Circulation was about 102.280 in 2007. It was traditionally a Christian-Democratic paper, associated with the Christian-Democratic and Flemish Party, and in opposition to the Socialist Flemish daily De Morgen...

and monthly from 2001 to 2003 in De Morgen

De Morgen

De Morgen is a Flemish newspaper with a circulation of 53,860. It originates from a merger in 1978 of two socialist newspapers Vooruit and Volksgazet ....

.
In 2009 he received the Herman de Coninckprijs for his poem "Moeders". Tuur Florizoone and Jessa Wildemeersch composed music for these nominated poems.

Source

• Official Site: http://www.luukgruwez.be
• Luuk Gruwez
• Willem M. Roggeman, Luuk Gruwez In: Beroepsgeheim 6 (1992)
• G.J. van Bork en P.J. Verkruijsse, De Nederlandse en Vlaamse auteurs (1985)