Doris Kareva

Doris Kareva (1958) is an Estonian poet, one of those people about whom it is easy to write ‘needs no further introduction’. However, even if Kareva needs no further introduction, she definitely deserves to be regularly recalled. One of our most modest national treasures, her work is simple, yet mysterious. She is the perfect writer, whose influence becomes obvious gradually, profoundly, behind everyday hustle and bustle – above all with her writing, which is precise yet abstract, linguistically polished yet playful. Kareva’s most recent work Perekonnaalbum (2015) is built around a consistent poetic technique: the personification of ideas and presenting them as characters. In 2013, Mihkel Mutt wrote about Kareva in the literary magazine Looming: “Doris Kareva continues to write at an age when illusions have usually been forgotten, but the mind is keen. And this is good. She stands out like a bright spot, like a great reminder amidst all the carousels and hurdy-gurdy music, the triviality and the cheap sales.”