TCR Talks with Sirje Kiin

BY: KAIA Gallagher

Sirje Kiin is an Estonian writer, poet, and journalist currently living in South Dakota, and the biographer of Marie Under, one of Estonia’s best-known poets.

Born in 1883, Marie Under established herself as one of Estonia’s premier poets in the beginning of the twentieth century through her expressionist and neo-romantic poems. Her early poetry explored themes of happiness, joy, and erotic love. Later, during the 1920s, she addressed topics related to justice and death, with lyrics that merged dark, apocalyptic visions with a yearning for happiness and all-embracing love.

TCR Talks with Mart Kivastik

BY: Kaia GALLAGHER For a small country of 1.3 million people, Estonia has a rich and long-standing literary tradition based on centuries of folklore and lyric poems. The country is located on the Baltic Sea to the south of Finland and shares its eastern border with Russia. At the end of World War II, Estonia was occupied by the Soviet Union, forcing many of the country’s authors and playwrights into exile. A select few remained in Estonia but found themselves constrained by Soviet censorship.  This period lasted nearly fifty years, between 1944 through 1991, during which a generation knew nothing…