Martinus Hendrikus Benders (born 23 July 1971, Helmond

Helmond

Helmond is a municipality and a city in the province of North Brabant in the southern Netherlands.- Quarters and Neighbourhoods :*Quarter 11 Inner City**Neighbourhood 0 Centrum**Neighbourhood 2 Leonardus**Neighbourhood 3 Heipoort...

 http://hellemond.web-log.nl/hellemond/2008/11/wie-is-hij.html) is a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 poet who currently lives in Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

, Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

.http://www.martijnbenders.nl M.H. Benders was one of the first Dutch poets that worked with multimedia on the internet on the now extinct domain kannibaal.nl. Some of these works are still online on his own site. He won the Meervaart Price for Literature in 1994 and the Dunya Price for Literature in 2003. However, instead of collecting these prices himself he sent Dikke Dennis to read poetry pretending to be M.H.Benders. On another occasion the Dutch composer Samuel Vriezen performed pretending to be Benders with a fake moustache

Fake moustache

A fake moustache or false moustache is an item of prosthetic make-up used in dressing-up, acting, espionage and crime. Fake moustaches are made in different ways, but usually require the wearer to use spirit gum to affix the moustache to his face. Some have a self-adhesive backing...

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His poetry is mostly a mix between absurdism and conceptualism and seems to have little to do with his public stunts that, some argue, are mainly there because of his contempt for the Dutch world of literature, a feature he shares with Dutch poet Gerrit Komrij

Gerrit Komrij

Gerrit Jan Komrij is a Dutch poet, novelist, translator, critic, polemic journalist and playwright. From 2000 to 2004 he was the Dutch Dichter des Vaderlands .-Biography:...

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Benders published his first poetry book titled 'Karavanserai' in 2008, with Nieuw Amsterdam publishers. He got nominated for the prestigious Buddingh price for the book, but staged a Laibach

Laibach

Laibach can refer to one of the following:* German name for Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia* Laibach , Slovenian industrial musical group** Laibach , the title of the debut album by the band with this name...

-esque performance on the awards, where Bart van der Pligt read an Anti-Price poem and Samuel Vriezen wearing a fake moustache yelled the price had to be taken seriously from within the audience. Benders sang 'Lezen is Lezen' from a dark corner, to the tune of the known 'Life is Life' song of the Austrian band Opus

Opus (band)

Opus is a pop-rock group from Graz, Austria. Formed in 1973, the group remains active today. The band is especially well known for its 1985 single release, "Live Is Life."-History:...

Currently Benders is working on four works at the same time: a new poetry book called 'Bilderberg', a novel called 'Bankenchrist', a philosophy book called 'Holokapitaal' and a CD with his newformed band Genus Pongo called 'Oben Ohne'