Doris Kareva – författare

Doris Kareva is one of Estonia's leading poets, admired especially for poems that balance precision and control with passion and bravado. Her achievement, according to Estonian Literature, is in writing poems which are both `plentiful and fragile like a crystal...balancing on the line between the human soul and the universe, between sound and silence'. Days of Grace spans over forty years of her poetic output, showing how the sustained depth and clarity of her poetry lies in her ability to create ambiguity and suggest harmony at the same time, with a multiplicity of meanings generating the opposite of clarity: a form of hinting which at its most illuminating becomes utterly oracle-like. Such is the metaphysical sensitivity of her poetry that its moral charge is sensed almost physically. She has also been called `a priestess of love' who is fearless as well as discreet in her portrayal of love that is so `pure and elevating like mountain air' that she seems to be writing from another time or dimension.

The Shape of Time is Doris Kareva's eleventh collection and, as with all her books, its publication was hailed as a major literary event in Estonia. In style, it is more restrained than her earlier collections but its themes are the same – love and its great enemies, death and time – and the poems still retain the romantic bravado and recklessness that make her work so compelling."This minutely sculpted, effortlessly elegant, and endlessly expansive collection is further evidence of an important poet at the height of her powers."Acumen"It is a work of pure lyricism that in a sense seems almost wholly rooted in personal feeling and experience. Some poems seem to have arisen almost immediately from specific occasions, if only through their flaring intensity; others to be a coming to terms with experience after time has passed... Many of the poems grow out of different kinds of pain such as the thwarting or loss of love, the attrition of time, or the anguish of an existence that seems meaningless, but the overall impact is exhilarating. Sometimes this is simply because the swiftness, energy and beauty of the poems themselves seem to reflect a resilience and generosity of spirit, a kind of implicit reaching out to embrace whatever life offers."Edmund Prestwich"This is difficult, engaged writing, about the ambiguities and uncertainties of the journey through time; adventurous in both theme and treatment, it will not please every reader. But it will certainly challenge."EnvoiDoris Kareva is arguably Estonia's leading female poet. Born in Tallinn in 1958, she studied English Language and Literature at Tartu University and worked in the cultural weekly Sirp from 1978 to 1993 and from 1997 to 2002. From 1992 onwards, she has been the Secretary General of the Estonian National Commission for UNESCO in Estonia. She has published one book of essays and 14 collections of poetry which have been translated into over 20 languages.

This anthology features the work of six of Estonia's most celebrated poets, including Jüri Üdi ja Juhan Viiding, Kauksi Ülle, Hasso Krull, Triin Soomets, Elo Viiding and Jürgen Rooste. These poets write from their oral tradition and folklore, explore new forms of poetry thought music and marginalia and note-making. This is a fascinating anthology of diverse voices, from ironic to sincere to humorous and many more subtle tones.Doris Kareva was born in 1958 and has published fourteen collections of poetry and one collection of essays. Her poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages including Greek, Thai, Hindi and Hebrew. She is also a highly-regarded translator and has translated the works of many authors into Estonian, including the poetry of Akhmatova, Dickinson, Gibran and Kabir, essays by Brodsky and Auden, and plays by Beckett, Brodsky and Shakespeare. She has also compiled and translated a collection of Irish contemporary poetry.