City birds
This is Jen Anderson’s debut poetry collection, City Birds, for which the artist Kristians Rozītis created an airy and visually striking design.
City Birds reveals the lyrical depth and subtlety of Jen’s language, her characteristic Latvian directness, and her feminine wisdom.
Editor, poet, and publicist Ilmārs Šlāpins helped organize the collection:
“The axis of this collection is formed by the poems Biography and City Birds, but it is structured around six thematic blocks: Disappointment, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Shame, and Guilt. By materializing and personalizing these emotions, literally looking into the eyes of unpleasant feelings, it becomes possible to understand and overcome them.”
Jen Anderson addresses readers who are interested in psychologically nuanced poetry that encourages self-reflection:
“City birds are not only pigeons, sparrows, and crows, but all city dwellers, including people. We, city birds, are the agitated, emotionally exhausted, confused, and lost individuals of this era. Birds survive with their wings, but people, with faith and hope. Perhaps this is the only thing that allows us to rise above the city in today’s conditions, to view the world from a bird’s-eye perspective, to distance ourselves from the noise of the earth, and there, in silence, to meet ourselves.”
The book was published with the support of the State Cultural Capital Foundation (VKKF).