Hit Parade: The Orbita Group

by Kevin M.F. Platt (Editor)

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. HIT PARADE is a bilingual Russian-English collection of poems by the four leading authors of the Orbita creative collective, based in Riga, Semyon Khanin, Artur Punte, Vladimir Svetlov and Sergej Timofejev. Though their work is primarily written in Russian, the Orbita poets draw on European, Latvian and Russian traditions and contemporary scenes. Founded in 1999, Orbita has published a series of almanacs of literature and visual art and a number of bilingual Russian-Latvian books of poetry, essays, art and photography, as well as three audio CDs and a collection of videos. Active in multi-media poetry installations for galleries and museums, Orbita has also organized three "Word in Motion" festivals of poetic video and multi- media art in Latvia. Orbita's projects have been recognized with The Latvian Writer's Union Annual Literature Award, the Poetry Days Award, the MAP Book Design Award, among others.

Edited and with an introduction by Kevin M.F. Platt, this collection includes translations (often collaborative) by Polina Barskova, Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman, Julia Bloch, Daniil Cherkassky, Sarah Dowling, Natalia Fedorova, Eugene Ostashevsky, Karina Sotnik, Sasha Spektor, Anton Tenser, Maya Vinokour, Michael Wachtel, Matvei Yankelevich, and Platt himself.

Genres: Poetry

272 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2015

About the author

Kevin M. F. Platt is a professor of cultural history in the Russian and Eastern European Studies and Comparative Literature and Literary Theory departments at the University of Pennsylvania. He authored the books History in a Grotesque Key. Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution (Stanford University Press, 1997; in Russian, «История в гротескном ключе: Русская литература и идея революции». М.: Академический проект, 2007) and Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths (Cornell University Press, 2011). He edited the recently published book Global Russian Cultures (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Currently, he is finishing a book titled Near abroad: Russians in Latvia and is researching Russian historiography of the 18th to 21st centuries. He is the founder of the symposium Your Language My Ear.

Reviews

[Anton Relin · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best poetry collection I've read in a very long time. Many of the pieces are absurd and hilarious. Refreshing to see Russian language poetry in free verse.