On the Edge of a Sword

Kristiina Ehin was born in Rapla, Estonia in 1977. She received an M. A. in Comparative and Estonian Folklore from Tartu University in 2004. She has published five volumes of poetry in her native Estonia and has won a number of prizes there, including Estonia's most prestigious poetry prize for her fourth volume, written during a year spent as a nature reserve warden on an uninhabited island off Estonia's north coast. She has also published a book of short stories and written a play.The Drums of Silence (Oleander Press, Cambridge, 2007), a volume of her selected poems in English translation, was awarded the Poetry Society Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation in 2007. Her other books in English translation are Põletades pimedust (Burning the Darkness), An Dorchadas á Dhó (trilingual Estonian-English-Irish selected poems, Coiscéim, Dublin, 2009), A Priceless Nest (short stories, Oleander Press, Cambridge, 2009), Päevaseiskaja - South-Estonian Fairy Tales (Huma, Tallinn, 2009) and Noorkuuhommik (New Moon Morning)(selected poems, Huma, Tallinn, 2007).She is often invited to take part in international arts and literary festivals and her work, poetry and prose, appears regularly in English translation in leading Irish and British literary journals. Her work has been translated into twelve languages.The poems in The Scent of Your Shadow have been selected from her most recent book, entitled Emapuhkus, published in April 2009. The poems were written over a period of two years beginning shortly before the birth of her child.