Home » Entertainment » “A woman’s voice moves the countryside” Sandra Ratniece reviews Ieva Rupenheite’s latest poetry collection.

“A woman’s voice moves the countryside” Sandra Ratniece reviews Ieva Rupenheite’s latest poetry collection.


Sandra Ratniece, “Latvijas Avīze”, JSC “Latvijas Mediji”

Poet Ieva Rupenheite (1969) made his debut with the poetry group in the newspaper “Soviet Youth” in 1987. Already four years later, together with Mārtiņš Tīrums and Kaspars Vanags, the collection “Maniskas” (1991) was published, then ten years later Ieva Rupenheite’s poetry collection “The Necessary Underline” (2001) was published by Neputns, and the author has remained loyal to moment.


The poetry’s collections were published after a considerable period of time: “Black Beads” (2007), “Do Not Go” (2014) and recently the publishing house “Neputns” has published Ieva Rupenheite’s (1969) fourth poetry collection “Release a Woman”.

It is made in four parts, but the visual image of the collection is made of works of art by Jānis Murovskis. Ieva Rupenheite is not only a poet, but also an illustrator of books, the author’s visual thinking can be felt very well in her poetry as well.

Poetry visuality

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It is customary to talk about the musicality of poetry many times, but there is another aspect – the visuality of poetry, and such poetics is characteristic especially of poets, for whom the second form of expression of creative handwriting is often found in fine arts.

Latvian culture is rich in literary artists, the list here would be extensive, but I will mention a few – for example, Ruta Štelmahere, Rūta Mežavilka, Žebers, Māris Salējs.

Here, too, in the context of poetry poetry of the poet / artist Ieva Rupenheite, we can talk about the visuality of poetry, more precisely, the poet’s visually associative thinking, because this poetry does not have the emotional worldview of time (“man and sweater broke out / unloved watercolor faded to the wall / the strong square of the wallpaper turned out to be much more loved / the composition stolen to the sun like roses kept in the herbarium”; p. 17).

If we talk about the emotional colors of the mood, the poet has a darkness, which, however, is more like breaking out of the darkness than depressing getting stuck in it, because “a black scarf with red roses / shows teeth in the dark”. (P. 37)

A poetically multi-layered collection

While reading her poetry, the associative world of sounds is also very much addressed, which Ieva Rupenheite puts into the mood of poetry vividly and precisely. Yes, the poet’s sound world sounds outside of time and space – like the visuals offered by the author, it is multidimensional and asymmetrical (“the generator is standing / a woman’s voice moves the fields” (p. 7), “ ”; P. 11).

Sympathetically, the author offers new variations (intertextuality) of the folklorized image / song series, or, in other words, an original and very appealing one / another image / song well known to us is created (for example: “my owner died / other shepherds cried [..]”; 33) deconstruction and a refreshing interpretation of it, thus creating a paradoxical poetics (flies fly fast / who will buy them silver skates for them ”(p. 39),“ ultra short waves of glitter / will tear any bear tear radio long distance / only green eye / looks at the darkness from the kitchen shelf / the end of the play / we beat our hands / while it is cold ”(p. 63), etc.).

Poetry is therefore binding, that each of us can interpret it through our prism of feeling, experience and knowledge. Namely, it may be just my association, and it may not have been the author’s intention at all, but in the context of these literary allusions I found a sympathetic poem “Children in a Museum”, which draws parallels with Elza Ķezber’s elements of salon poetry (“brown lady / brown lady / will also walk tonight / brown lady in velvet dress / dark wine in a glass [..]”; (P. 31))

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There is also a presence of religious motifs in Ieva Rupenheite’s poetry, but in general the collection is full of femininity – fragility, worries, pain and everyday life, but above all there are women’s emotions and the notion that “things are treacherous is the heart ”. (P. 87)

Ieva Rupenheite’s creative handwriting (also this collection) is characterized by unsaturation, so without unnecessary lace of words and imaginative expression, the author is able to surprise the reader with precise word games that cover a wide range of dimensions and associativity in the poem, thus suggesting and surprising. ”. (P. 51)

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