Contemporary Estonian Poetry: A Baltic Anthology

 Description:

This anthology presents three generations of poets from Estonia: those born before the Soviet occupation, during it, and shortly before the country regained independence in the 1990's. From the classical perspective of Latvian Peters Bruveris and Astrid Ivansk's mystical poetry, though avant-grade Lithuanian Vytautas P. Bloze and Jonas Zdanys, translator and poet in his own right, born in the U.S. to refugee parents - to inventive Estonian poet Asko Kunnap and the story -weaving Jaan Kaplinski, also a translator whose mother was Estonian and whose Polish father disappeared in the Gulag archipelago during the war. This poetry will catch you by surprise as it lays out individual experiences of exile and homeland.

About the Author:

Inara Cedrins is an artist, writer and translator who went to China to learn to paint in Chinese ink on silk in 1998, and remained five years teaching English at universities, using poetry as a vehicle. She then studied thangka painting and taught in Nepal; and lived in Riga, teaching Creative Writing at the University of Latvia, in 2005. Her anthology of contemporary Latvian poetry written while Latvia was under Soviet occupation was published by the University of Iowa Press in 1983. Upon returning to America in 2006 she lived in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area; in 2010 the Chicago Artists Coalition chose her for an artists’ residency at the Merchandise Mart, and she has remained in Chicago. She lives in New Orleans, LA.

Publisher: UNO Press, 2013

Edited by Inara Cedrins

ISBN: 978-1-60801-052-3

Format: Paperback, 270 pages