This selection includes poems previously unpublished in English as well as work drawn from all four of Jaan Kaplinski’s previous collections of poems translated into English: The Same Sea in Us All (Breitenbush Books, USA, 1985; Collins Harvill, UK, 1990), The Wandering Border (Copper Canyon Press, USA, 1987; Harvill, UK, 1992), Through the Forest (The Harvill Press, UK, 1996), and Evening Brings Everything Back (Bloodaxe Books, 2004), which drew on three books, Evening brings everything back (1984), Ice and Heather (1989) and Summers and Springs (1995).
Through the Forest was published in Estonian as Tükk elatud elu by Eesti Kostabi Selts (Tartu) in 1991; Evening brings everything back as Õhtu toob tagasi kõik by Eesti Raamat (Tallinn) in 1984; Summers and Springs as Mitu suve ja kevadet by Vagabund (Tallinn) in 1995.
The Soul Returning is previously unpublished in English translation. Three translations originally published in The Wandering Border (‘No one can put me back together again’, ‘And when the sea retreats from here’, ‘Night comes and extinguishes the numbers’) are republished here as part of The Same Sea in Us All, where they belong. Three of the twelve poems in the section Poems Written in English (‘Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Karl Rahmer’, ‘Coming home’, ‘Om svabhavasuddhah sarva dharmah’) appeared in The Wandering Border; the other nine poems are previously unpublished.
Special thanks are due to Arts Council England for providing a translation grant for this book.
Jaan Kaplinski wishes to thank Sam Hamill, Hildi Hawkins and Fiona Sampson for their work on the translations from Estonian, and Lawrence Kitching for editorial help with poems written in English.