Nice Poetry

This year’s literary spring was enlivened by the election of the new Chair of the Estonian Writers’ Union. There were four candidates, all well-known by the public, with one woman competing with three men – poet, writer and translator Maarja Kangro, who won. This way, Kangro’s success disrupted the more than a century-long tradition of chairmen of the Writers’ Union. Times have clearly changed – when Estonian writers were captured in a photograph at the Tallinn Town Hall in 1933, there was only one woman among 26 men – Marie Under. However, we have been living in the age of gender equality for a while now, which is why it is no wonder the resonance of this tendency is felt in the Estonian written word, where the contribution of strong and self-aware women is no longer something uncommon. The HeadRead literary festival has invited these voices to speak in our programme for a few years now. This year, you can listen to the following authors: poet Elo Viiding, who stood out with her socially sensitive topics and cutting style as early as the 1990s and who celebrated her 50th birthday in March this year; Rika Tapper, one of the most remarkable new voices and poetry performers of the younger generation; Janika Läänemets, an advocate for environment-sensitive poetry; poet and textile artist Maryliis Teinfeldt-Grins, who, despite her young age has already won the First Step Award of the Prima Vista literary festival, and poet Mirjam Parve, the translation and diary editor of the Värske Rõhk magazine, whose debut collection Varjukeha (2023) won the Betti Alver Literary Award.