THE DRUMS OF SILENCE

2007 Popescu Prize Winner!

The Drums of Silence won the  2007
Corneliu M. Popescu Prize for European Poetry in Translation

The Drums of Silence is the latest collection by Estonian prize-winning poet Kristiina Ehin and the first to be published in English. In Kristiina's poetry, history and tradition form the framework from which the present and future are explored. The poems presented are a powerful statement on our world and are at once a rapturous celebration of nature and a lament to civilisation's encroachment on it. Her poems juxtapose the delicacy and exuberance of this natural world with the growing presence of industry and technology in a lyrical and compelling examination of humanity’s relationship with our planet. Interwoven with images of extraordinary radiance abutting shards of sorrow, every stanza takes the reader to a place of awareness and on to one of appreciation.

Ilmar Lehtpere has provided a faithful and precise translation from the original Estonian, allowing the poems to graduate with sincerity and literary authority to another life in a new language.