Poet Helve Poska dies of coronavirus in Sweden
Writer and poet Helve Poska (1925-2020) died in Stockholm on Tuesday, April 14. She was eulogized by Peeter Järvelaid.
On Tuesday, April 14, 2020, Helve Poska departed from among us in Stockholm. State policy in the fight against the COVID-19 virus in Stockholm has been much more liberal, but it is clear by now that the disease is now striking both older people as well as foreign residents who are less tuned into general information flows.
Helve Poska's departure is a terrible loss for the extended family of our statesman Jaan Poska (1866-1920), because Helve Poska remained a connection with Jaan Poska's own family. She was the wife of Jaan Poska's youngest son, Jüri Poska (January 8, 1919-January 12, 1974) and, as a result, was the venerable matron of the entire extended Poska family in her final years.
But Helve Poska herself was an incredibly creative personality, and it is worth quoting here what was written when one of her collections of poetry was published in Estonia:
"Helve Poska. A poet born in Haapsalu in 1925 who has attended school in Haapsalu, Tallinn and Sweden. In 1944, she married law candidate Jüri Poska (1919-1974), and they had four children. As a writer-poet, Helve Poska has perfectly mastered the rare art of writing crowns of sonnets, examples of which can be found in all of her selections of poetry."
Helve Poska had published her collections of poetry in Estonia as well, and was a member of the Estonian Writers' Union. If today we can read overviews of what writers fell victim to the Spanish flu that raged 100 years ago (Kafka among them), then perhaps one day we will write that the Estonian Writers' Union lost Helve Poska during the 2020 corona crisis as a victim of this epidemic. Writing this made me think that we are a small people by number, but, being very occupied during the emergency situation right now with what is going in Estonia, we don't have a very good overview of how things are going for Estonians that live abroad today. It is a difficult issue, but we should know if Estonians have fallen victim to this new epidemic away from their homeland.
Let us bow our heads today — in memory of Helve Poska! Her son Patric Poska writes, "Now she is on her way to heaven, and she can watch over us from heaven."
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Editor: Aili Vahtla