Jānis Rokpelnis
Author

Poems

[durvīs...] latvian

Translations: ru fr

[Un tu pārtapi vējā...] latvian

Translations: ru sv

[cilvēki ir caurstaigājami pavasarī...] latvian

Translations: en tr fr sv cs et ru

[Svina gulbis peld kanāla melnajā brūcē...] latvian

Translations: en et de ru

[Ja būtu vijole zivs...] latvian

Translations: cs tr bg fr sv en et ru

[ai bruņiniek...] latvian

Translations: tr fr et

Roze latvian

Translations: en ru fr de

Jānis Rokpelnis
Author

About

* 02.10.1945, Riga, Latvia
lives in: Riga, Latvia

The poet Jānis Rokpelnis was born in 1945 in Riga into the family of the writer Fricis Rokpelnis. He studied psychology and philosophy at the Leningrad University (1963–1969) and graduated in philosophy from the History and Philosophy Department of the Latvian State University.
He has worked for the State Museum of Art, the Riga Film Company, the cultural weekly “Literatūra un māksla”, the daily “Labrīt” and the literary magazine “Karogs”. Rokpelnis has also lectured at the Latvian Christian Academy. For several years, he worked as poetry consultant for the Writers’ Union of Latvia and led a poetry workshop in 2004. He has edited numerous poetry and fiction books of younger authors.

Rokpelnis has published six poetry collections, the first being Zvaigzne, putna ēna un citi (A Star, a Shadow of a Bird and Others) published in 1975, the latest, Vārti (The Gate) was published in 2004. Next to poetry, he published two collections of essays, numerous screenplays for puppet films, a libretto for the musical Meistars Aleksandrs (Master Alexander, 2002), as well as a biographical novel Modus (about the model and fashion designer Baiba Puzina, 2000).

An expert of Russian poetry, he has translated works of Alexander Blok, Inokentiy Annenski, Marina Tsvetayeva, Semyon Khanin and others. He has received the most prestigious literary award of the Baltic states – the Baltic Assembly Prize (2000), as well as numerous national awards. Rokpelnis received two awards in 2010, the Ojārs Vācietis Award and a prize from the magazine Latvju Teksti for his books of poems.