Martinus Nijhoff was a Dutch poet and essayist. He studied literature in Amsterdam and law in Utrecht. His début was made in 1916 with his volume De wandelaar ("The wanderer"). From that moment he gradually expanded his reputation by his unique , 1936) and the long poem Awater (1934), describing a clerk in an office which Nijhoff seeks to elevate in his boring everydayness and revolutionary just by featuring words like typewriter, office, and dime. A number of individual sonnets also rose to fame, particularly De Moeder de Vrouw ("The Mother the Woman/Wife") commemorating the opening of a bridge over the river Waal near Zaltbommel.