Latvia Weekly

Līga Horgana is back with a literature review of  Latvija - tik un tā / It's Latvia - anyway , a bilingual collection of prose poetry  written by Aivars Eipurs and illustrated by  Petra Derkins. The first outcome of cooperation between Latvian poet Aivars Eipurs and Swiss artist Petra Derkins was a  2020 exhibition  of short prose works accompanied by assemblage and collage art pieces. This was followed by the bilingual book Latvija – tik un tā / It’s Latvia – anyway in 2021, a compilation of the original art by Derkins and texts by Eipurs.  Many Latvians' first associations with the title Latvija – tik un tā  are likely with the popular song “Tik un tā” by Uldis Stabulnieks (lyrics by Māra Zālīte) that contemplates the beauty of Latvia as autumn approaches. In this case, the familiar title is a bit of a play on words, as the collected works portray Latvia as beautiful, of course, but also as unique, real, and complicated.  Derkin’s artworks that are created using newspapers