An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets

by Valentina Polukhina (Editor), Daniel Weissbort (Editor), Stephanie Sandler (Preface)

This anthology, the first of its kind, aims to be comprehensive. Valentina Polukhina surveys the entire scene, reading some 1000 collections and manuscripts, and thoroughly investigating what is accessible on the vibrant Russian literary internet. The anthology ranges from Moscow to Vladivostok. It includes writers from former Soviet Republics such as the Ukraine. Work by Russian women poets living abroad (in Britain, the United States, Italy, France, Israel, etc) is also represented. Focusing on the middle generation, with major figures like Svetlana Kekova, Vera Pavolova and Tatyana Shcherbina, the anthology includes work by the youngest generation, born after 1970 and virtually unknown outside Russia, as well as senior poets like Bella Akhmadulina and Natalya Gorbanevskaya. Consultants have included scholars, critics and editors, like Dmitry Kuzmin, who created the indispensable poetry website for younger poets, "Vavilon". Other consultants in Russia include Olga Sedakova (Moscow State University/MGU), Irina Kovaleva (MGU), and Lyudmila Zbuova (St. Petersburg University). Translators include such distinguished English poets as Elaine Feinstein, Ruth Fainlight, Maura Dooley and Carol Rumens, as well as Russianists and scholars in Britain and the United States such as Peter France (Edinburgh), Catriona Kelly (Oxford), Robert Reid (Keele) and Stephanie Sandler (Harvard). 'Russian poetry is in a healthy state as it leaves the glaciers of communism for the steamy jungle of western hedonism,' D.M. Thomas declared in Poetry London. The anthology provides a host of insights into post-Soviet reality, from the point of view of women writers who were less compromised by the Soviet system, offering more resistance to the pressures of political conformism.

Genres: Poetry, Russian Literature, Russia

320 pages, Paperback

First published September 29, 2005

Reviews

[Hind · Rating 5 out of 5]

Till now
I’ve not been able to imagine
what it’s like to long for water
in a desert,
and striving
to make flour out of the sands.
Evidently, it’s worth surviving
so as to experience something other than
writing.

— Inna Kulishova (tr, Daniel Weissbort)

[Tatyana · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I see
your hands in my nightmares,
they bring me unbearable pain …
and yet they are just wiping the dust
from the pale looking-glass of my soul."
-- Ekaterina Vlasova, “I see”

"A little sympathy
for the poor birds,
whose wings have grown heavy with snow.
A little compassion
for my own inner I,
who cannot attain this luxury—
wings heavy with snow …"
-- Elena Vasileva, “A little sympathy”

"I used to be your echo
I used to be a doe for your shoulders
A frequent reason for your eye
An approaching shore for your lake of tears
A white lotus in one hundred vases

You were given to me
As the absolute answer
To the only question
I had to ask"
--Natalya Starodubtseva, from I used to be your echo …”

"My soul is like a kite
and the string is in your hands.
It is wild as the wind and disobedient
and the string is in your hands."
-- Olga Sulchinskaya, from “The Kite”


"Rhyme is a woman, trying on clothes,
plaiting a rose into her hair.
She splashes in blood, like a naiad,
and surfaces, when not asked to."
-- Tatyana Voltskaya, from “ Rhyme is a woman, trying on clothes …”

"Create me a world
of transparent-green fibers,
of dark-snowy skies,
and opal-smoky heights;
I will depart forever,
will slip between walls, between windows
into that narrow opening,
that house, behind which is sunrise."
-- Elena Vasileva, “Create me a world”

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poems by Anna Glazova, Inga Kuznetsova, Yelena Kostyleva, Raisa Moroz, Yelena Vasilyeva in my translation inside.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Orchin harasho.