Early Life

Regina Derieva was born on 7 February 1949 in Odessa. In 1960, she moved with her parents to Tselinograd (now Astana), and five years later to Karaganda. In 1969, she graduated from music college and went on to work as a piano teacher for fourteen years.

In 1979, Derieva graduated from the Faculty of Philology at Karaganda University, and in 1989 she became a member of the Soviet Writers' Union.

Her poetry attracted the attention of Joseph Brodsky, who observed: “The true author here is poetry itself, freedom itself.”
Emigration and Life in Israel

In early 1991, following Brodsky's advice, Derieva left the Soviet Union and moved to Israel. She lived in East Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Beit Safafa but never obtained Israeli citizenship.

Having been baptised into the Catholic Church in 1989, she was not eligible for citizenship under Israel's Law of Return.

In 1996, the Supreme Court of Israel formally denied citizenship to Derieva and her family. She subsequently spent several years without valid documentation, working as a poet-in-residence at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute.

In 1999, after receiving an invitation from Swedish bishops to attend an international conference in Linköping, Derieva was expelled from Israel and prohibited from returning.

Life and Literary Career in Sweden

After obtaining Swedish citizenship and becoming a member of the Swedish Writers' Union, Regina Derieva participated in literary festivals in Sweden and internationally.

In 2003, she received a Shannon Fellowship from the International Thomas Merton Society. In 2009, she was awarded the Swedish Catholic Church's Ora et Labora Medal for her contribution to literature.

Derieva was the author of approximately twenty books of poetry, essays, prose, and translations. Her works were translated into English, Swedish, French, Arabic, and other languages. Among her translators were Daniel Weissbort, Jim Kates, Peter France, Alan Shaw, Robert Reid, Veronika Losskaya, Bengt Jangfeldt, Håkan Sandell, and Bengt Samuelson.

Before her emigration, her writing appeared in Soviet literary journals including Prostor, Avrora, Raduga, and Neva.

After 1991, her poetry and prose were published in numerous international literary magazines and journals, including Modern Poetry in Translation, Salt Magazine, Poetry East, Holy Land Magazine, La Terra Santa, Šiaurės Atėnai, Cross Currents, Artes, Poetry Magazine, Notre Dame Review, Ars Interpres, Aorta, QLRS, mid)rib, The Liberal, Quadrant, St. Petersburg Review, Artful Dodge, The Dirty Goat, Cyphers, Dublin Poetry Review, and Poetry International.

Her work also appeared in Russian-language literary publications such as Novy Zhurnal, Vstrechi, Poberezhye, Interpoezia, Den i Noch, Khreshchatyk, Stetoskop, Zvezda, Novaya Yunost, Arion, Oktyabr, and Znamya.

British poet Tim Liardet described her poetry:
“Regina Derieva's finest poetry is at once intimate and immediate, vivid and ordinary, personal and detached. Few poets are capable of achieving such a transformation in so few words.”

Derieva's poetic cycles Via Crucis (The Way of the Cross), De Profundis, and Hail Mary were released on compact disc by the British classical music label The Divine Art.

The first two cycles were set to music by the Italian composer Armando Pierucci.

Legacy and Remembrance

Regina Derieva is buried at Norra begravningsplatsen (Katolska Kyrkogården) in Stockholm.

The main collection of her literary papers was donated to Stanford University. Additional materials are preserved at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the archives of the Sigtuna Foundation, and the Sigtuna Museum.

Derieva's literary legacy encompasses poetry, prose, essays, and translation, reflecting a life shaped by geographical displacement, spiritual exploration, and an enduring commitment to language.

Her work occupies a distinctive place in contemporary literature, bringing together different cultural traditions and exploring the relationship between faith, memory, exile, and the human condition.

Poet and literary scholar Tomas Venclova offered the following assessment of her writing:
“Regina Derieva sets in motion the secret resources of language, revealing its paradoxical nature. The living pulse of vocabulary, unexpected substitutions of concepts, and echoes of quotations bitterly reinterpreted give her poems depth and, at times, epigrammatic precision. Her images can be elusive and whimsical, seemingly even accidental at first glance — but theirs is the apparent randomness that is merely the reverse side of necessity.”

Портрет Регіни Дерієвої роботи Денніса Креффілда.