Flowers of Ice

Ziedonis was born in 1933 near Riga, Latvia, in a family of fishermen. His first book, a collection of poems, appeared in 1961. Since then, over 30 books of Ziedonis’ poems, epiphanies, fairy tales, literary travelogues and film scripts have appeared. In his home country, the initial press run of his books is 30,000 copies — for a language group of 1.5 million — and this press run is sold out in days. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. He has travelled widely, and has read his work in Europe, Asia and North America.

“When Imants Ziedonis appeared as a poet, it was a shock, an explosion, not only in Latvia but throughout the Soviet Union. This unpretentious man, who looks so much like the Latvian paysage, is the most modern literary figure from his area and he changed Soviet literature in every sense of the word with his avant-garde motorcycle poems. But he is not superficially avant-garde, he is deep, and philosophically great in his prose poems, the epiphanies. He is one of my favourites, one of the best poets in the whole country, and so, one of my favourite poets anywhere.” —Andrei Voznesensky