Doris Kareva on Books for Breakfast Podcast
Estonian poet Doris Kareva has been tipped to win the Nobel Prize several times in recent years. Her retrospective Days of Grace: Selected Poems, translated from the Estonian by Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov, spanning over forty years of her work, was published by Bloodaxe in April 2018. Her poems have been described as ‘plentiful and fragile like a crystal… balancing on the line between the human soul and the universe, between sound and silence.’ (Estonian Literature).
Doris and Miriam launched the book at the EstLitFest, The Estonian Literature Festival, held at the Print Room in London in April 2018 (see video below). Doris also read at the Cork International Poetry Festival in March 2019 and at Poetry Ireland in Dublin (with her translator Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov) in October 2019.
BOOKS FOR BREAKFAST PODCAST WITH DORIS KAREVA
Books for Breakfast, Episode 74: John Banville and Doris Kareva, Thursday 6 March 2025
Estonian poet Doris Kareva was featured on the Irish podcast Books for Breakfast on 6 March 2025, World Book Day, with readings in Estonian and English from her 2018 Bloodaxe retrospective Days of Grace: Selected Poems, along with extracts from an interview in which she spoke about her work. The recording was made during Doris Kareva’s recent visit to Trinity College Dublin’s Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation.
Doris read a number of short poems in Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov’s English translation, and extracts of her readings of the poems in the original Estonian were also played. The short poems read in full in English were: ‘You are no better than anyone…’ (p40), ‘Sing in praise of the loser…’, (p42), ‘Chant the mantra, madragora…’ (p64), ‘When I write…’ (p27), ‘What is a man?...’ (p33), ‘I Slept the sleep of minerals…’ (p93) and ‘Snow is a blank sheet…’ (p105), all from Days of Grace: Selected Poems.
Co-host Peter Sirr introduced Doris Kareva by saying that the two English translations of her poetry from Arc and Bloodaxe ‘have afforded English speakers an insight into the delicately crafted, intense and spare poems which characterise her work.’
‘Was 1950s Dublin really a place of murder and intrigue? On today’s show we travel to the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation in Dublin’s Fenian Street to talk to novelist John Banville about his latest novel, The Downed, the fourth in a series featuring Detective Inspector St John Strafford and the pathologist Quirke familiar to many from the Benjamin Black novels. And we talk to Estonian poet Doris Kareva who visited the Centre recently about her own poetry, translation, and Estonia.’
Doris Kareva features from 28:26.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1162427/episodes/16677205
Doris Kareva: Days of Grace
Doris Kareva launched her Days of Grace: Selected Poems at EstLitFest in London in April 2018, when Neil Astley also filmed her reading a selection of poems included in the book. In this video she reads the poems in Estonian, with Miriam McIlfatrick’s translations as subtitles, as well as reading a number of the translations in English and discussing her work at the end.
[06 March 2025]
