Dato Barbakadze was born in 1966, in Tbilisi. He learned philosophy, psychology, sociology and ancient history in Georgia and Germany. In the 90s, after the declaration of independence of Georgia, he founded and published several literary periodicals in Tbilisi and one video magazine. These editions created an important platform for the development of non-simulative alternative literature in Georgia. During this period Dato also taught academic courses of the history of philosophy, aesthetics and logic in different universities in Tbilisi. Currently he is a visiting lecturer at Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, and a visiting teacher at two schools. 

Dato Barbakadze writes prose and nonfiction essays, he also translated German language literature, but nonetheless, the essential part of his creative life is poetry. The major influences in the formation of his poetic aesthetics were: on one hand, clerical poetry from Georgian middle ages, as well as Ancient Greek and classic German metaphysical systems; on the other – his problematic (aka romantic) relationship with Georgian cultural-social context.  

Poet

for Henning Vangsgaard

I sit with these people

Bake their bread, even play tennis with them

When they want to kill me

Then I leave the room, go out and set fire to the field

So horses can run faster,

Toss their riders and flee the earth.

Then I return and continue to bake bread or cakes,

Sometimes sneaking up to the photograph of my white cat

And softly shouting in its ear:

“Leave this good mouse alone

And be kind to it instead

So it doesn’t want to eat millet any more”

Then once more I sit with these people and smile at them for now,

Before I again go out to the field to see the wind

Which seizes the trees and writes something

Sometimes fast, sometimes faster,

Sometimes it falls asleep and I sneak up to it

Like I sneak up to the photograph of my white cat,

But still cannot see anything.

I do not know this alphabet and this language yet,

I can see only the nervous endings of the trees

They always want to be seized by the wind

And once more write diligently when it wakes up

Now I sit with these people again

Tell them stories, bake their bread

And return their change with a laugh.

Sometimes I go out to the field and am glad

Winds still write, and the horses have disappeared

Having run from all horizons, having fled all riders.

Translated by Nato Alkhazishvili and Lyn Coffin