Erna Ķikure (née Bērziņa, married Dzelme) was born on 4. October 1906, in Ļaudona district in Latvia. She grew up on the family property “Ķikuri” on the Aiviekste River. She went to Rīga to study at the Latvian Academy of Fine Art and graduated in 1932 with a Graphic Arts degree in drawing and printmaking. At the same time she was continuing her studies in piano at the Public Conservatory of Music. She then taught art at the Ilūkste High School and travelled in Finland, France and Belgium, where she furthered her own research at the Academy of Art in Antwerp. Her work of that time is represented in public collections in the Latvian cities of Rīga, Daugavpils, Madona and Tukums, as well as in the Malmo Museum in Sweden.

World War II brought displacement to Germany. From there Ķikure and her family emigrated to Australia. It was there that her writing was first published in the Latvian-language press. Written expression, until then a private pursuit, gradually became her major creative focus and outlet.

Erna Ķikure, now widowed, lives alternately with each of her two daughters: Dzidra Mitchell in Sydney, Australia, and Inese Birstiņš in Montréal, Canada.

Some of the poems in this volume have appeared previously in Austrālijas Latvietis, the Australian Latvia newspaper, in Latvija, the German Latvian newspaper, and in Jaunā Gaita, a Canadian Latvian journal devoted to literature and the arts. Four other poems have been set to music by the composers E. Freimanis and E. Māršaus. They have been performed in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1971 Ķikure translated Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot and it was performed by the Sydney Latvian Theatre. Her work has also been included in Daugavas Vanagu Mēnešraksts, a Canadian Latvian monthly, in Treji Vārti, an American Latvian literary magazine, as well as in two anthologies of Latvian literature abroad, published by Grāmatu Draugs in the U.S.A.: Dzejas un Sejas, (poetry), 1962 and Prozas Profili, (prose), 1964.