Anna Auziņa

Anna Auziņa is a Latvian poet and painter, born in 1975, in a creative family. Her paintings have been exhibited since 1994, she has had solo exhibitions, has written four well received, prize-winning collections of poetry (Isolated Gardens in 1995, Skiers Kissing in the Snow in 2001, I Looked Happy in 2010 and Anna's Dowry Cow in 2017). Anna Auziņa has worked as a copywriter, and does research in literary studies, as well as writes reviews of books of poetry, theatre plays, and is actively involved in the art world and criticism. In I Looked Happy Auziņa recognizes poetry as a natural part of life, and vice versa, everyday life as poetry. Her poem I Have a Book Inside Me is a bright example of poetry accumulating the biography of the author, and it has also been awarded the Olivereto Prize. Poems are often personal, yet well grounded in detailed references to objective reality and her memories of experiences as a child, a woman, and A human being. Anna Auziņa's poetry is calm and subtle, creating narratives that entangle the readers in elaborate images which encourage readers to address important issues. It has been said of her poetry that "her poetic forms vary a lot, while the mode is generally [a] kind of metaphorical statement-making" (David Hart, 2011). Auziņa's poems have been translated into Russian, English, Lithuanian, German, French, Swedish, Finnish, and several other languages, and have been included into such anthologies in English as Six Latvian Poets - New Voices from Europe published by Arc Publications in 2011, and A Baltic Anthology Book 1: Contemporary Latvian Poetry published by UNO Press in 2013.

Photo: Ģirts Raģelis