HAUS FÜR POESIE

On this evening, we present three outstanding poets who represent an important part of the broad spectrum of contemporary Latvian poetry:

Elvīra Bloma (born 1986 in Ogre) is a poet and translator from English, Norwegian, and Russian. She has been publishing poetry since 2014. Two volumes have appeared so far: Izdzēstie attēli (Orbīta 2020, “Deleted Images”) and Vil)am patīk šie dzejoji (Punctum 2024, “He Likes These Poems”). For her latest volume, she was awarded the Literature Prize of the Year (LaLiGaBa) for the best single poetry publication. Her poems are memories of memories. They pose simple questions that sometimes take the form of lists, asking why the human body resembles drying hay or why the Georgians have such a beautiful alphabet. She tells of a girl whose flute playing is despised because it touches the spine of an apartment block, making its vertebrae vibrate, and of shared smoking of grass in abandoned huts. The drunkards on the street become astronauts defying gravity, while the pallor of sleepless nights pulses through the walls of buildings.

Līva Marta Roze (born 1998 in Riga) has been publishing poetry in various literary journals since 2020. Her debut collection Struktūra (“Structure”) appeared last year, earning her the prestigious Ojārs Vācietis Literary Prize. Her poems, which often verge on the grotesque, feature water spirits pulling children through drains into the sewers. They are full of mares and all kinds of apparitions. Gym teachers are suspected of being demons, and chalk circles are drawn around boarding school beds to keep the Mistress of the Deep away. The poems explore unruly hair, the dance of infatuation, dream gazelles slipping through tiny mesh fences, sometimes leaving nothing behind but a worn-out shoe. Yet they also evoke the scent of vanilla in a long corridor and the curious qualities of cinnamon, rosemary, and mugwort.

Kārlis Vērdiņš (born 1979 in Riga) has published six poetry collections and four children’s books. He has translated Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Georg Trakl, and Charles Simic into Latvian. He has received numerous Latvian literary awards, and in 2014, a jury at London’s Southbank Centre included his poem “Come to Me” in a list of the 50 greatest modern love poems. In his work, thoughts quietly sing of their disappointments while stroking the poet’s hair, and invisible elephants are kept as pets. There is a profound gentleness in them, stemming from solidarity with the vulnerable. The tone is casual, a prose-like parlando, yet suddenly a branching future can reveal itself in a column of dust dancing over a wet floor.

For this evening, the poems have been specially translated into German by Lil Reif and Sven Otto.

After the event, you are invited by the Latvian Embassy to join us for a free drink.

The event will be interpreted Latvian–German. A joint presentation by Haus für Poesie and LATVIAN LITERATURE.

Reading & Discussion: Elvīra Bloma, Līva Marta Roze, Kārlis Vērdiņš
Moderation: Irina Bondas