Bart Plouvier made his debut in 1987 with the collection of short stories “De maquette”, but that debut was preceded by a richly filled life. As a young man he came into contact with the Antwerp artistic environment and the hippie movement. He went to live in the countryside and tried to live a self-sufficient life there, but it didn’t turn out the way he expected.
In the 1970s he made a living as a bartender, gardener, construction worker, factory worker, cook, brewer’s guest and even musician in the Bobbejaanland amusement park. In his search for peace, he went to sea in the 1980s. For four years he worked as a sailor on the long circumnavigation. Back on shore, he opened a restaurant in Elversele, a sub-municipality of Temse. He combined cooking with writing. From 1997 he was allowed to call himself a full-time author. Since his retirement he only wrote poetry.
In 1990 he presented his first collection of short stories, “Uit het meer – chronicle of a village” in the program “Who writes who stays”. Elversele plays the leading role in the book. “I look at the village through a loupe, which I have sharpened from my experiences, nostalgia and melancholy,” he said.
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