Katrīna Rudzīte
- Latvia -
Katrīna Rudzīte (a.k.a. Katrīna Kuduma, 1991) is a Latvian poet and publicist publishing since 2007. Her two poetry collections are "Saulesizplūdums" (Sun Blur, 2014) and "Ērti pārnēsājami spārni" (Comfortably Portable Wings, 2020). For Sun Blur, she received the Annual Latvian Literature Award for Best Debut in 2015.
Katrīna Rudzīte writes about literature, culture, and social issues in Latvian online magazines Satori and Punctum. Her poems, reviews, and opinion pieces have also been published in other online and printed media.
Rudzītes’s poetry has been translated into English, Greek, Belarusian, Russian, Slovenian, and Estonian. She holds a bachelor’s degree in cultural and social anthropology from the University of Latvia and a master’s degree from the Latvian Academy of Culture.
She performs as a stand-up comedian in Women's stand-up.
Poet Artis Ostups wrote of her debut collection: “The persona of Rudzītes poetry lives in a perpetual state of earthquake – the ground under her feet shakes ominously until it vanishes altogether. The fragments of reality tumbling over one another, the visible world becomes subject to doubt. And Rudzīte knows how to beautifly surrender to this horror.”
“If in her first book, uncertainty caused fear and horror, then in her second she has often chosen the path of playfulness. (…) That said, humor and joy seem to be what separates Comfortably Portable Wings and Sun Blur. A part of Rudzites new poems contains light-hearted fun, refreshing antics, which bring a brighter note to the texts without taking away the depth.” A Latvian poet and critic Ivars Šteinbergs wrote in 2020 (“I Am Not That Girl Anymore”).
In her writing and performances, Rudzīte explores topics relating to historically marginalized aspects of a woman’s experience, such as the relationship with her body, sexuality, and disease. She believes that all forms of inequality in society are interrelated and stem from unjust power structures; most recently, she has turned to addressing political issues, such as sexism, homophobia, and ableism in her creative work. Currently, Rudzīte is translating the poetry of Audre Lorde into Latvian.
“Katrīna Rudzīte not only confirms that radically associative poetics can still be uplifting, as the critics noted about her first collection Sun Blur, but also, that alongside Inga Gaile, Anna Auziņa (the editor of the book), Madara Gruntmane, and other female poets she clearly manifests that the author is not and has never been dead,” poet and critic Raimonds Ķirķis wrote (“Me and Rudzīte”, 2020).
Poetry
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the structures of memory / atmiņas struktūras
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the eclipse of language / valodas aptumsums
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when will this poem end? / kad beigsies šis dzejolis?
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the people who lived in summer / vasaras iemītnieki
