Kalju Kruusa

***[Kiirel tööajal]

Language: estonian

Translations: norwegian (***[I den travle arbeidstid]), german (Im Berufsstress)

***[Kiirel tööajal]

Kiirel tööajal
öö kella poole kaheks äratuse sean,
et tuleks meelde minna vahelduseks magama.

2017.8.9 Pääskülässä

Kalju Kruusa

photo © Elli Feldberg

* 10.10.1973, Tallinn, Estonia
lives in: Tallinn, Estonia

Kalju Kruusa, born in 1973 in Tallinn, is an Estonian poet who claims to "never wear plainclothes" as a writer. Even the name Kalju Kruusa is but a pen-name (a small poem in itself, as noted by critics, with Kalju meaning 'Rocky, Cliff, Craig,' and Kruusa meaning 'Pebbles, Shingle, Scree').
Kalju Kruusa entered the Estonian literary field in the 1990s among the line-up of the young writers' group Erakkond ('Hermit-kind'. A newly-coined word resembling, and opposing, the word erakond – meaning '(political) party'). The group also comprised of Kristiina Ehin, Mehis Heinsaar, Aare Pilv, Lauri Sommer, and others. Being particular about names points to the sense of language that is characteristic to all of Kalju Kruusa's poetry. Yet, his poems deal mainly with the down-to-earth aspects of everyday life, and even touch upon private life – in spite of playing hide-and-seek with the reader.
The year 1999 saw the release of Kalju Kruusa's debut collection Meeleolu (Frame of Mind). After this release, new collections – where his original works mingle with translations – have followed on a regular basis. As a translator, editor and publisher, Kalju Kruusa is also a co-founder (with Hasso Krull) of the first Estonian eZine (online magazine) of translated poetry called Ninniku, where he held the position of co-editor from 2001 to 2010. Kalju Kruusa has translated poetry, prose and plays from Chinese, English, Finnish, French, Italian, Japanese and Korean into Estonian.
In 2012, his collection Tühhja (Nothing, 2010) won the Estonian Cultural Endowment’s Literary Award for poetry. In 2017, Kalju Kruusa came out with his collection of selected poetry Ühe inimese elu (pooleli) (The Life of a Man (Halfway Through)). Kalju Kruusa has been selected as a recipient of the Estonian writer's salary since the beginning of 2019. His three-line tanka poems published here on the Lyrikline poetry site have been written earlier, while he was leading the rougher kind of freelancer life. Books of Kalju Kruusa's poetry have been translated into both Swedish and Italian.

photo © Kris Moor

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