Having Never Met by Inga Pizane and translated by Jayde Will

This is poetry from Latvia.

Having Never Met by Inga Pizane translated by Jayde Will is published by A Midsummer Night’s Press. This is a Book originally written in Latvian. This was published in 2018.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781938334313E12.

Having Never Met, by Inga Pizane and translated by Jayde Will, is a Latvian poetry collection built around one of the great lyric conditions: intimacy without encounter. The title suggests imagined relation, distance, projection, and the odd tenderness one can feel toward someone or something not fully known. I would read this book as poems of absence and anticipation, where the emotional charge comes not from what happened, but from what never quite had the chance to happen. Will’s translation has to carry that lightness without letting it become vague. The title feels contemporary in the best way, alive to mediated life, longing, and the difficulty of presence. This seems like a good collection for readers who like quiet poems with a private ache behind them.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.