In this second anthology introducing contemporary Baltic poetry, we meet the younger generation of Latvian poets who started writing and publishing after the country gained independence following the disintegration of the Soviet Union of which it had been part for half a century, a generation whose poetics is placed in a wider context by the editor and translator Ieva Lesinska and by the leading poet and translator of the older generation Juris Kronbergs, in their superbly informative introductions which offer many insights, both serious and witty, into the present and past of Latvian poetry.

Caks (1901-50) is Latvia's leading mid-20th-century poet, an early adopter of modern literary tendencies from wider Europe, and one of the first really urban poets in the Latvian language - until his eruption onto the scene, Latvian poetry had been grounded in rural life, reflecting the preponderance of Latvian speakers in the countryside, compared to the large German- (and later Russian- ) speaking population in the cities. His first book appeared in 1928, and he threw himself into the Riga literary scene by creating a magazine devoted to younger writers. He made a living by teaching and through magazine journalism. This is the first book devoted to his work in Britain.