Jürgen Rooste was born in 1979 in Tallinn. He has worked as a journalist, a teacher, and the director of the Estonian Institute in Finland. In addition to close to a dozen poetry collec- tions, he has published a number of joint books with friends.
Furthermore, he has composed textbooks and dictionaries, organized poetry evenings and festivals since 1998, and runs the Cabaret Interruptus poetry-theater. Rooste has won Estonia’s annual award for poetry on two occasions.

He has received numerous prizes: Estonian Cultural Endowment’s Award for Poetry (2005, 2013); Friedebert Tuglas Short Story Award (2007); Tallinn University Literary Award (2012).
Rooste himself has been ‘rocking’ in the direct sense of the word: his poetry readings mostly take place with musical accompaniment. Rooste presents his poems accompanied by punk- rock music, either reciting or singing, ‘humming, growling, wheezing, shouting, blabbering and other attempts at articulation’.

STREETCORNER MUSICIANS

in the end, we’re all
street-corner musicians
some just have a bigger hat
maybe a bigger heart, too
bigger...
in the end, awful sunflowers will paint us and not vice-versa
a morning teacup
cuts its ear off
but there’s nowhere to mail it
the post office is closed
so it makes it its facebook picture
in the end, we’re all
street-corner musicians
the world’s security-camera fellinis film us a security guard sheds a tear of holy oil and says amen
awful sunflowers
cry the sobs of a forsaken lover
the epitaph reads: life’s a flower
post that on your facebook wall!