Shota Iatashvili: The Wings of Death

Born in 1966, Shota Iatashvili is a famous poet, fiction writer, translator and art critic. He made his debut as a poet in 1993 with The Wings of Death; since then, he has published a significant number of poetry collections, four works of prose and a book of literary criticism, which won him the Saba literary award for best critical essay of the year. At the same time, Iatashvili is a literary translator, who introduced Georgian readers to Styles of Radical Will by Susan Sontag and the work of a number of American poets, published in a Georgian anthology. Currently, Iatashvili works as Editor-in-Chief for the Akhali Saunje journal and hosts the Library show at Radio Liberty. He received several poetry awards and participated in numerous international literary festivals, such as EST-OUEST (Die, France, 2006), Poetry International (Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2007), ORIENT-OCCIDENT (Romania, Curt-De Arges, 2006), the V and VI International Poetry Biennale (Moscow, Russia, 2007, 2009) etc. Iatashvili’s poetry has been published in several countries, appearing in, for instance, a collection of his own poems The Pencil in the Ground (Krok 2016, Ukraine), the Anthology of Georgian Poetry (Arc Publication 2016, UK), the anthology of Georgian poetry Aus der Ferne (Corvinus Presse 2015, Germany), the comprehensive anthology of Georgian poetry Ich aber will dem Kaukasos zu… (Pop Verlag 2015, Germany) or the collection of contemporary poetry from Georgia Hedendaagse poezie uit Georgia (Poezie Centrum, Gent, Geruisloos geraas 2010, Netherlands).