Karlis Verdinš Latvia

Karlis Verdinš was born in 1979 in Riga. He has published four books of poetry: Ledlauži (Icebreakers, 2001), Biezpiens ar krejumu (Cottage Cheese with Sour Cream, 2004), Burtinu zupa (Alphabet Soup, for children, 2007) and Es (I, 2008).

He is a highly-respected critic, with an MA in Cultural Theory and a PhD in Philology, and has published many essays on literature as well as translations of European and American poets (including T. S. Eliot, Konstantin Biebl, Georg Trakl, Joseph Brodsky, Walt Whitman, Charles Simic), and has also written libretti and song lyrics, including texts for Gabriel Jackson’s Adonis Images for soprano and piano. Since 2007, he has been working at the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia.

His own poetry has been translated in many languages, including collections in Russian, Polish and Czech, and appears in the Arc anthologies A Fine Line (2004) and Six Latvian Poets (2011). His dissertation The Social and Political Dimensions of the Latvian Prose Poem was published by Pisa University Press in 2010.

(2015)