Shape of Time

About Doris Kareva

DORIS KAREVA (author) was born in 1958 and graduated cum laude in Roman-Germanic philology from Tartu University in 1983. From 1978-1993 and from 1997-2002 she worked for the cultural weekly 'Sirp'. From 1992-2008 she was the Secretary-General of the Estonian National Commission for UNESCO in Estonia and from 2009 Chief Editor of the family journal 'Meie Pere'. Since 1978 Doris Kareva has published fourteen collections of poetry and one collection of essays. Her poems have been set to music in Dutch Greek Swedish Belgian and English. Canadian and German choreographers have set her poetry to dance. The City Theatre in Tallinn has performed her poetry for a few seasons and in Thailand her texts were performed at the Bangkok Royal Opera Theatre. Her poetry has been translated into more than twenty languages including Greek Thai Hindi and Hebrew. She is also a highly-regarded translator and has translated the works of many authors into Estonian including the poetry of Akhmatova Dickinson Gibran and Kabir essays by Brodsky and Auden and plays by Beckett Brodsky and Shakespeare. She has also compiled and translated a collection of Irish contemporary poetry. Kareva is frequently asked to give poetry readings and talks about Estonian literature and culture both at home and abroad. She has selected and edited numerous literary anthologies contributed articles to literary journals and written intro-ductions to books by other authors. In autumn 2006 she participated in the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. She is the recipient of many literary prizes and awards. Doris Kareva has worked as a stipendiate in United States Sweden Denmark Greece Ireland Flanders and Italy and has given readings of her work throughout Europe Scandinavia the United States and the Far East. TIINA ALEMAN (translator) is a poet translator and editor. She was born in the Bronx New York in 1958. Her mother's family emigrated to the United States from Estonia after the Second World War and her father was born in Panama. An only child she grew up with her maternal grandparents on a farm in upstate New York and as a result Estonian was her first language. Since the mid-1980s she has been a frequent visitor to Estonia. She has participated in poetry readings and performance art projects in a variety of venues in the New York City area and in 2009 a selection of her poetry was published in 'Mosaic'. Doris Kareva's translations of her poetry have been published in Estonia. Tiina Aleman has translated three volumes of Kareva's poetry as well as an essay and a number of individual poems some of which have appeared in 'The Iowa Review' 'Dragonfire' 'Words without Borders' and 'ELM'. Since 2008 she has been working with the Berlin-based Estonian composer Juri Reinvere as translator and translation editor. She has translated an essay-length biography of Reinvere and an essay about his work 'The Art of Grieving' by Sofi Oksanen. She has edited the libretti of three of his operas and an essay about his music by Gerhard Locke. Two of Aleman's book reviews have appeared in Commonweal magazine where she has worked since 1997 as production editor. She lives in Jersey City with husband Tony Iannotti and their two cats. PENELOPE SHUTTLE (introducer) has published seven collections of poems since 1980 including a 'Selected Poems' in 1998 (OUP Poetry Book Society Recommendation). 'Redgrove's Wife' (Bloodaxe Books 2006) was shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize. Her latest collection is 'Sandgrain and Hourglass' (Bloodaxe Books 2010). She has also published five novels and is co-author of two prose works 'The Wise Wound' and 'Alchemy for Women'. Since 1970 Penelope Shuttle has lived in Falmouth Cornwall and was married to the poet Peter Redgrove who died in 2003. She is a Hawthornden Fellow and received a Cholmondeley Award in 2007. She is also current Chair of the Falmouth Poetry Group a long-running workshop group founded by Peter Redgrove in 1972. She has been a judge for many poetry competitions including The Arvon and The National. She has read her work at numerous festivals and venues in the UK Europe and North America and a CD of her poems is available from The Poetry Archive.