Russian Poetry Week

Conference venue: Pushkin House, 5A Bloomsbury Square, London
Period: June 17-20, 2013

Russian Poetry Week is an event organized by London's Pushkin House, the leading centre for showcasing Russian culture in London. The event will host prize-winning translators and poets and will entail readings in Russian and English.

Monday June 17th: Sponsored by the STEPHEN SPENDER FOUNDATION, this evening will be devoted to the work of three recent winners of the Brodsky-Spender Translation Prize: Alexandra Berlina, Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski. Sasha Dugdale will interview Boris and Irina about translating Arseny Tarkovsky; Glyn Maxwell and Alexandra Berlina will talk about translating Joseph Brodsky.

Tuesday June 18th: OSIP MANDELSTAM (sponsored by the PUSHKIN CLUB). Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk, Peter France and others will discuss and read from new translations of one of the greatest of C20 European poets. Alexandra Berlina, Masha Karp and Irina Mashinski will read some poems in Russian.

Wednesday June 19th: THE SOVIET UNION'S OTHER POETS (sponsored by the G.B.RUSSIA ASSOCIATION). Much attention has been focussed for many years on Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Pasternak and Tsvetaeva - all of them poets with dramatic biographies. This has led us to neglect other fine poets - Semyon Lipkin, Maria Petrovykh, Boris Slutsky and Arseny Tarkovsky (father of the great film director) whose lives were less dramatic. All four supported themselves for much of their lives by translating and were able to publish their own work only relatively late in life. Stephen Capus, Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk and Katherine Young will read from their translations; Alexandra Berlina, Masha Karp and Irina Mashinski will read some poems in Russian.

Thursday June 20: RUSSIA'S OTHER POETS - FYODOR TYUTCHEV AND AFANASY FET (sponsored by the PUSHKIN CLUB). Tyutchev is often considered the greatest Russian lyrical poet after Pushkin, yet to most English lovers of poetry he is only a name; Afanasy Fet is barely even that. Lazy talk about poetry's untranslatability obscures the fact that there are now a number of good translations of both poets. Robert Chandler, Boris Dralyuk, John Dewey and others will read both from their own translations and from the brilliant translations of Frances Cornford (1886-1960). Alexandra Berlina, Masha Karp and Irina Mashinski will read some poems in Russian.

General entry: £7
Concessions: £5

Pushkin House
5a Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1A 2TA

tel.: +44 (0) 20 7269 9770
fax: +44 (0) 20 3116 0151