Elo Viiding (Estonia)

Elo Viiding was born in 1974 in Tallinn. She graduated from the Georg Ots Music School specializing in violin and from the Estonian Institute of Humanities with a degree in acting. Viiding is a translator from English and Finnish, has worked in an advertising agency, and taught at the University of Turku and Tallinn University. She is the author of fifteen books of poetry, four prose books, and also writes essays and children’s stories. She published her first four books under the pen name Elo Vee. Viiding is a third generation poet: her grandfather Paul Viiding belonged to the Estonian avant-garde collective of the 1930s known as the Arbujad (Soothsayers); her grandmother Linda Viiding was a woman of letters and a translator; her father Juhan Viiding (pen name Jüri Üdi) was a poet, actor, and director. Elo Viiding’s poetry has been translated into English, German, Russian, Swedish, and Finnish. The present anthology contains poems from her collections Meie paremas maailmas (In Our Better World, 2009), Nõelad (Needles, 2013), Elujäämisrežiim (Survival Mode, 2024).