Latvia

There is not that much English info out there on Latvian poetry. Many of the linked articles I came across looked sketchy, even if they were just victims of poor translation. Here’s what I did find:

The Latvian Institute loves N.E.P.!

This site also has great info on Latvia in an all-around sense (History of Latvian Lit! Latvian Economics! Latvian Government and Politics!).

On nature in contemporary Latvian poetry, from Lituanus, Lithuanian Quarterly Journal of Arts and Sciences.

A feature on Latvian Poetry can be found in the Winter 2005 issue of Drunken Boat.

J.C. Todd, Margita Gailitis and Inara Cedrins, translators for the Latvia section in N.E.P., were also involved with the Drunken Boat feature (Gailitis and Todd, in fact, split editing duties for it).

Cedrins also wrote this book, published in 1984 and translated this blurb about Liana Langa.

The environment of Latvian poetry is an insular one. This is not surprising given the following:

*Latvian is an Indo-Baltic language that is closely related to Sanskrit; as a result it is linguistically complex and therefore infrequently translated.

*Latvian was suppressed as a national language for a half-century during the Soviet occupation. It reemerged as a recognized language in 1990, yet Latvians struggled to reestablish its relevance in a world relatively saturated by the geopolitical dominance of Russian and English.

*During the Soviet occupation, massive immigration occurred between Russia and Latvia. Sixty-five years later, Latvians are outnumbered by ethnic Russians in many major Latvian cities, including the capital, Riga.

However, as Todd states in her introduction to the feature at Drunken Boat:

“…Latvians have had a millennium of practice in sustaining the repertoire of meanings embedded in their language when it has been forced underground. From the tenth century, AD, when Rune stones in the region of Courland document Viking attacks, until the twentieth century, Latvia struggled against repeated sieges and occupations by Danes, Germans, Russians, Tartars, Teutonic Knights, Poles and Swedes. In 1920, Russia and Latvia signed a peace treaty that relinquished all Soviet claim to Latvian territories in perpetuity, yet by 1940 the Soviet military had violated the treaty and occupied Latvia once more, an occupation that continued until 1990-91 when, with the collapse of the Soviet government, Latvia gained the independence it currently observes. During the centuries of occupations, Latvian dainas (folk songs) have recorded, revealed and handed down not only the cultural heritage but also the effects of oppression and moral resistance to it. When they were sung, and that was frequently, the language emerged, alive with history yet imbued with the sense of hereness that song in throat achieves. By the late 1930's, over 2,000,000 dainas had been collected in the Archives of Latvian folklore in Riga. Collected, but not embalmed for the dainas form the core of a vast repertoire performed by Latvian choral societies. Folk fests and choral competitions have been part of the fabric of Latvian life for centuries, festivals in which the collective consciousness of the nation is awakened in song. When the dainas are sung, the nation listens.

The submersion of the Latvian language during multiple occupations has not destroyed its roots. Instead it has created a contemporary poetry of displacement and psychic rupture expressed in fragmented images and narratives, a Baltic surreal that emerges from multiple perspectives, blurred definitions of time and place, neologisms and other linguistic innovations, and anti-authoritarian subjectivity. This is a thoroughly post-modern, post-colonial, post-traumatic poetry, as literary historian Karl Jirgens has noted. Paradoxically, Latvia's position as a “weaker,” occupied nation has been transformed into the strength of its literature.”

Bravo!

Here’s an example of a Daina:



And in the spirit of a strong Latvia, here’s the national anthem:



Now that you’re jumpin’, here’s a Latvian Folk Dance:



Finally, burn one down with Ronalds Briedis: