Latvia Weekly

Līga Horgana is back with a literature review of  Voices on the Bridge , a collection of Irish and Latvian poetry  compiled, translated, and partially written by Noel Lyons and Skarleta Feierabends . Ireland and Latvia have a very special connection. Over the last almost 20 years since Latvia became an EU member state, a large number of its people have emigrated and found a new home in Ireland. As of 2016, according to the data by the Irish Central Statistics Office, there were around 20,000 Latvians living in Ireland. Many Latvian kids are born and brought up in another country, which raises the questions historian Gints Apals asks in the afterword of Noel Lyons and Skarleta Feierabends poetry book Voices on the Bridge : “Where exactly is home? Where will home be after ten or twenty years. How long will this land be a temporary abode or will I be here forever? Is it possible to belong to two homelands – old and new?” The book was released last spring, which is when I got my copy since