Lokālais un globālais Guntas Šnipkes dzejā
Authors: Kuduma Anda 
Published: June 2020

The article deals with the representation and interaction of the local and global elements in Liepāja poet and professional architect Gunta Šnipke’s poetry writing. The research aims to establish and evaluate the importance of local and global aspects in Šnipke’s poetry creation process by determining the conceptually characteristic ways in the formation of poetic expression. The article particularly emphasizes the phenomenon of memory which reveals the dimension of time in Šnipke’s poetry space, allows to speak not only of the individual but also of the cultural memory by precise emphasis of concrete geographic places, topographic details (showing both the local and global scale) which have directed the author to an observation. The phenomenon of memory reveals the dimension of time and illuminates several levels of individual and collective memory – historical, cultural, autobiographical, feminine.
The theoretical and methodological basis of the research includes the viewpoints of feminism theoreticians (Rosi Braidotti, Virginia Woolf and others) on the aspects of mental nomadism in the perspective of gender studies, as well as several aspects of the cultural memory research (works by Aleida Assmann, Marija Semjonova and others).
The local and global issues have been researched mostly in Šnipke’s newest poetry collection “Ceļi” (‘Roads’, 2018) concurrently demonstrating the broader context and development process of the poet’s creative activity since the publishing of the first two poetry collections – “…Bērns ienāca…” (‘…A Child Came in…’, 1995), “...Un jūra” (‘…And the Sea”, 2008). The dominant of Šnipke’s poetic expression is a powerful impulse of thought which allows the creation of broader contexts concerning the current events and phenomena, thus expanding the boundaries of experience established by the strict form. The poet’s strong intellect is in a certain confrontation with an equally strong emotional experience. Šnipke’s poetry is characterised not only by the natural union of the intellectual and emotional elements in one poem but also by a successful amalgamation of various important levels – geographical, cultural and historical, social and personal, autobiographical. This feature is soundly used in creating the artistic concept of the poetry collection “Ceļi”. The collection was highly praised by professionals and awarded by several significant literary prizes.
Šnipke’s poetry coincides with the current tendencies in the contemporary Latvian poetry process both in content and form; the poetic thought is mostly expressed in expanded and associatively dense syntactic structures. Šnipke’s poetry complies with the feminine poetry tendency to record the history of one’s own family within significant historic events pouring the individual experiences into layers of collective experience. Personal and seemingly insignificant becomes of global importance joining the space of common European memory, the distant and foreign phenomena are made closer and more understandable. In the longer forms, a woman and the feminine language become the main narrators of the past.