The verses, typically four lines long and metrical, are called daina. Thanks to an effort to transcribe them in the 19th and 20th centuries, there are now about a million of them collected at the national library in Riga. “Aficionados say this canon of folk poems is as significant as any body of classical literature. … For the past 22 years, Ieva Szentivanyi has been rendering dainas into English. Her first volume was published in 2018 and the second is ready for the press.” – The Economist