Firebird Baltic Blue

By Helga Jermy

Being denied access to a place by necessity you invent it. In these poems, the author explores cultural identity and loss as the daughter of an Estonian dislocated from his family and country by post-war turmoil. Based on fractured truths, fairy tales and longings, this collection is a personal mosaic of a land and her place in it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Lee
• Release date: Dec 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781760414771

Book preview

Firebird Baltic Blue

Firebird Baltic Blue

Helga Jermy

Ginninderra Press

Firebird Baltic Blue

ISBN 978 1 76041 477 1

Copyright © text Helga Jermy 2017

Cover design: Helga Jermy

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All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be sent to the publisher at the address below.

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First published 2017 by

Ginninderra Press

PO Box 3461 Port Adelaide 5015 Australia

www.ginninderrapress.com.au

This collection is dedicated to Pete and Sophie Jermy for their ongoing love and support.

Contents

Introduction

Baltic Blue

Firebird

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Denied access to a place, by necessity you invent it.

Visiting my father’s country, Estonia, after his death was a kind of haunting and a constant juggle of focus between the blurred stories and a new reality which can never truly be my reality but, regardless, shapes and completes a sense of identity and belonging.

These poems emerge from family history, brief excursions, flexible truths, myth and secret longings. The final section includes poems that evolve from tangential thoughts and fabulations inspired by Estonian poetry, especially the early twentieth-century theories and innovations of the Siuru (Firebird) group.

These are the stories and the imaginings of a crossing into a new but