Doris Kareva Estonia

Doris Kareva was born in Tallinn in 1958, the daughter of composer Hillar Kareva. Having graduated from Tartu University in Roman-Germanic philology, she began work at the cultural weekly Sirp in 1979. From 1992-2008, she was the Secretary-General of the Estonian National Commission for UNESCO, and in 2006 was an alumna of the Iowa International Writing Program In 2011, she became the literary editor of Sirp, a post she held until 2013. She is now the literary editor of Looming.

Doris Kareva has not only published several books of poetry, a collection of essays and a book of prose, but she has also translated poetry, plays and essays (by Akhmatova, Auden, Beckett, Brodsky, Dickinson, Gibran, Kabir, Rumi, Shakespeare among others). She has compiled and edited anthologies, written essays, forewords and articles, texts for music and theatre, and has given lectures on culture, education and ethics in Estonia and abroad.

Her poetry has often been performed and staged. She has worked together with many Estonian as well as British composers, playwrights, musicians and choreographers.

Kareva’s poems and essays have been translated into English, Russian, Italian, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Icelandic, Finnish, Swedish, Czech, Slovenian, Slovak, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Catalan, Hungarian, Romanian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Bengali, Kannada and Thai. She has received two national cultural prizes in 1993 and 2005 and four literary prizes, and was awarded the prestigious Order of the White Star in 2001.

(2015)