Kārlis Vērdiņš

Biography

Vērdiņš grew up in Jelgava town. He took his B. A. and M.A. in Cultural Theory at Latvian Academy of Culture. He has a Ph.D. in Philology from University of Latvia (2009). Since 2007 he works for Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia.

Vērdiņš is the author of many academic papers and essays on literature, both Latvian and foreign, as well as a literary critic. He has published four volumes of poetry in Latvian - "Ledlauži" (Icebreakers, 2001, 2nd edition 2009), "Biezpiens ar krējumu" (Cottage Cheese with Sour Cream, 2004), "Es" (I, 2008) and "Pieaugušie" (Adults, 2015) as well as children book "Burtiņu zupa" (Alphabet Soup, 2007).

Vērdiņš has also written librettos and song lyrics for composers Ēriks Ešenvalds, Andris Dzenītis, Gabriel Jackson, Kārlis Lācis, and has published translations of W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Joseph Brodsky, Walt Whitman, Charles Simic, Georg Trakl, Lev Rubinstein, Jacek Dehnel, Konstantin Biebl and other authors. His own poetry has been translated in many languages, including separate collections "Titry" (translated by Semen Khanin, in Russian, 2003), "Niosłem ci kanapeczkę" (translated by Jacek Dehnel, in Polish, 2009), "Já" (translated by Pavel Štoll, in Czech, 2013) and "Come to Me" (translated by Ieva Lešinska, in English, 2015).

His monograph "The Social and Political Dimensions of the Latvian Prose Poem" was published by Pisa University Press in 2010.

Vērdiņš has received the prize of annual poetry festival in Latvia (2008) as well as the prize of newspaper "Diena" (2001 and 2008) and annual Literature prize for the best children book of the year (2007). In 2012, he represented Latvia at the Poetry Parnassus festival – part of the Cultural Olympiad in London. His poem "Come to Me" was included in Fifty greatest modern love poems list, chosen by poetry specialists at the London's Southbank Centre in 2014.

Vērdiņš' selected poems in English translation was published by Arc Publications in 2015. As poet and critic Gregory Woods wrote on this book, "his first person is singularly hard to pin down, apparently detached while involved, precise while vague, inventing stuff while accurately recording memory. The voices he adopts comment wryly on a world in which nothing could surprise us, even while everything takes our breath away. The reader finds she has to check the ground beneath her feet."