Acclaimed Dutch poet and philosopher Lieke Marsman dies aged 35

Poet and philosopher Lieke Marsman died on Wednesday, aged 35, from cancer, her publisher Pluim announced on Thursday.

Marsman, who was Dutch national poet from 2021 to 2023, was diagnosed with cartilage cancer in 2018. In 2025, she told the Volkskrant she would not let the disease stop her from writing. “I am not resigned to my imminent death. I still have things to say. I want them said,” she said.

Marsman’s poetry debut Wat ik mijzelf graag voorhoudt (2010) was widely praised. Her novel Het tegenovergestelde van de mens, published in 2017, combined poetry, prose and essays around climate change, and was labelled by the NRC as “one of the best books of the 21st century”.

In the same year, she published the poetry compilation Man met hoed.

In 2025, Marsman reflected on her illness in Op een andere planeet kunnen ze me redden, a collection of diary entries and philosophical analyses about illness, death and alien life. An English translation is expected in September.

She was awarded the prestigious Constantijn Huygens literary prize for her oeuvre that same year.

Marsman’s work has been translated into several languages, including English, Italian, Spanish, German, Turkish and Chinese.

Her last work, De dichter en de duivel, about a storage room which is the gateway to an underground world peopled by “influencers, politicians, opinion makers and columnists – and the devil”, will be published posthumously on June 9.