I strongly urge all our Latvian-speaking readers to go and get themselves  a copy of Laimīgs cilvēks, the freshly translated collection poetry by the Finnish poet Claes Andersson. The title means a happy man, and that is exactly what Claes was when performing in Riga in the launch event of his book. That was his first time in Riga, although he had been performing in Latvia before. He was then travelling with Poetry Ride and the reading was held in northern part of the country, so he never got to Riga. Some locals implied that this might be due to having an Estonian driver who couldn’t find the way to Riga. Which is of course a highly distorted view of reality, as our driver Tõnu could propably find the way to any place on earth and beyond.

But now that Claes finally got into Riga, he made the public very happy. He was not only performing poetry, but he also showed his skills as a jazz pianist.  It evoked some great memories of Poetry Ride 2008, when he was playing wherever he saw a piano... The translators of Laimīgs cilvēks, Juris Kronbergs and Guntars Godinš, are also poetry riders, as is the editor of the book Ingmāra Balode. There were also former poetry riders in the audience, so in a way it was like a family gathering.

My ability to speak Latvian is still in the level of demanding ice cream, so I wasn’t able to understand much of the new book. But as Claes was reading the original poems in Swedish, I understood that the book includes one of my favourite poems about love. Maybe you will find yours too?