For various reasons but particularly due to political censorship, my poetry, written in prison, was published as a collection only in 1990. I myself, following several rejections by publishers, was not in a hurry to go public with the poems from those years, wanting my imprisonment experience to speak with a more mature and deeper voice. In the introduction to the first of the several books now published I wrote: “I have been unwilling to make claims of uniqueness for my life's most difficult period--those seven years of imprisonment. That which for me personally was a tragic exceptional experience, for my people was a horrific historical norm.? -- Knuts Skujenieks

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Born in Riga, Latvia, poet and translator Margita Gailitis immigrated to Canada as a child. Gailitis returned to Riga in 1998 to work at the Translation and Terminology Center as part of a Canadian International Development Agency initiative. Today Gailitis focuses her energy on literary translation and poetry, having translated some of Latvia's finest poetry, prose and dramaturgy. Gailitis' own poetry has been widely published and has won her awards from both the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

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