Six Latvian Poets is the seventh in Arc’s New Voices from Europe and Beyond series. It features the work of six of Latvia’s leading young poets, three men and three women all under the age of 35 – Anna Auzina (b. 1975), Ingmara Balode (b. 1981), Agnese Krivade (b. 1981), Marts Pujats (b. 1982), Maris Salejs (b. 1971) and Karlis Verdins (b. 1979).

The anthology also features a fascinating introductory essay which traces the history of Latvian poetry from the earliest written word to the present day, by Latvia’s best-known poet and literary ambassador, Juris Kronbergs. This is a bilingual edition, with the Latvian original and the English translation on facing pages.

"A good translation suggests how the poet, if reading in English, would come across emotionally and musically, the kind of presence they would have. I am picking up both a boldness, a confidence on stage, a rush of energy and a sensitivity."
Stride

Ieva Lesinska was born in 1958. She now lives in Riga, working as chief translator at the Bank of Latvia, and as a freelance translator. She has translated the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot and various American Beat Generation poets into Latvian, and has published numerous English translations of poems and prose by Latvian authors in periodicals and anthologies in the UK and the US.