Ton Haak

Early in 1994, Ton Haak at age 50 left a successful career in design and visual communication in the Netherlands to travel extensively throughout the American West.  After four years on the road he settled in Abiquiu, New Mexico, where he has written travelogues for a Dutch magazine, essays for art publications, eleven screenplays, a novel, and is now finishing a book about his cross-continental wanderings and a second novel. 
 
Co-founder and director of the acclaimed poetry festival ‘Dichter aan huis’ in The Hague, Ton Haak began writing his own poetry after arriving in America. 
 
His first book, ‘Whims and Whispers, Pouts and Shouts’, is a handsome volume hand-bound by artists Bev Taylor and Tara Churchill of Farmington, NM.  His second volume, ‘Abitare Abiquiu – Backtracking, Sidestepping, Cutting Across Northern New Mexico’, is also handmade by Taylor and Churchill.  It is a collection of thirty poems about the land and the people of the Chama River Valley, with the title taken from the Italian word "abitare," meaning, habitat. 
                       
Twice a year, Ton Haak (with Jay Buros and Elizabeth Ayres) organized the Abiquiu "Raven in the Sun Salon."  Local writers, singers and musicians perform before a decor of paintings and photographs, also by local artists, which cover the high walls from ceiling to floor.  For each Salon a new theme was chosen. 

  "Each morning I follow an ancient Anasazi footpath, enter a canyon walled by tufa-topped sandstone, climb to a mesa’s green-lined tabletop.  My eyes scan the distant leaping line separating the azure sky from the purplish and golden earth, and my mind goes blank from pleasure.  Meanwhile, touching bedrock, thin sand in a wash, volcanic dust, my feet are finding letters.  My steps lead to the formation of words, gaining ground creates sentences.  Setting a vague course, I find that walking is talking, that I am telling stories, whether I want to, or not. My writing is merely poking around.  Orbiting.  Skedaddling.  And taking root."