The poems of Eljo (my father)

In the early fifties of the last century my father, Johan van Gemert, wrote a small, light-footed few times a week. #gedichtje in 'De Sirene ', the daily that appeared in his hometown of Oss. The poems were written in the Brabant dialect of his region and dealt with events that took place in Oss or in or around his hometown Megen (now municipality Oss). To keep it all readable for those who were less powerful the dialect, the dialect in the poems was somewhat 'watered'. By the way, there was a single verse that was written very consciously in General Dutch. Maybe a little more about this later.

He wrote the poems under the pseudonym #Eljo , of which the first two letters refer to 'Elisabeth' (my mother) and the last two letters to his own name 'Johan'.

In our youth, one of the notebooks was regularly taken out in which he carefully collected all the published and cut out pieces from the newspapers. He tried (he had everything at least double) to draw the poems in one copy, because maybe he could make a booklet of them, although my mother liked it a little less.

Unfortunately, the booklet never came. Today 40 years ago, on October 14, 1979, we celebrated his 58th and last birthday together.