Disbelief: 100 Russian Anti-War Poems

In conversation with Polina Barskova, Dmitri Manin, Anna Krushelnitskaya and Andrei Burago.

In-store @ Globus Books

JOIN US ON FRIDAY, APRIL 7TH, 2023 AT 5PM FOR OUR BOOKSHOP EVENT AND POETRY READING.

Globus Books is pleased to invite you to a conversation with Polina Barskova, Dmitri Manin, Anna Krushelnitskaya and Andrei Burago. We will be delighted to have you for a scintillating evening of poetry and translations recitals and discussion of a creative process, reading, conversation, and Q&A.

This event is in English and Russian.

Doors 4:30pm/ Reading 5:00pm

About Disbelief: 100 Russian Anti-War Poems:

Putin’s war in Ukraine has been met by outrage and disbelief around the world. Since the start of the war, writers in Russia, Ukraine and the Russian diaspora have been expressing their opposition to the invasion. An international group of poets and translators have been collecting these poems as the Kopilka project. Disbelief/ Немыслимо presents 100 of the most moving and hard-hitting of these poems by poets including Polina Barskova, Vladimir Druk, Tatiana Voltskaya, Mikhail Aizenberg and Tatiana Shcherbina.

In his lectures on Vladimir Vernadsky, Vsevelod Ivanov argued that in the noosphere – the intellectual cloud around the planet – wars and natural disasters create voids which must be filled by the work of poets, artists, musicians, and philosophers. This powerful tragic chorus is just such an attempt, expressing a shared sense of incredulity at a war in the heart of twenty-first century Europe that has left millions displaced and tens of thousands dead or imprisoned; that has triggered an international economic crisis, turned Russia into a pariah state and the Russian language into a tool of cultural erasure and oppression.

Our participants:

Anna Krushelnitskaya, translator, lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Anna’s original texts and translations appear in Russian and in English in various print and online publications. She has authored two collections of English poems. Anna’s most voluminous work is the 700-page bilingual interview collection Cold War Casual/ Простая холодная война (2019).

Polina Barskova, poet and writer, published her debut when she was only eight years old. She has lived in the United States since 1998. She studied classical philology in St. Petersburg and Slavic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she currently teaches. Apart from her extensive poetic work—eight volumes of poetry published since 1991—she dedicates her work as a literary scholar and editor to the poets of the siege of Leningrad.

Andrei Burago, translator, was born and raised in St. Petersburg, where he graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics of the St. Peterburg State University. Andrei moved to the USA in 1991. Currently, he lives in Seattle and works as a software developer.

Dmitri Manin, translator, is a physicist, programmer, and poetry translator. His translations from English and French into Russian and from Russian to English have been published in books and journals, including Delos, Metamorphoses, The Cafe Review, Cardinal Points, and others. He won the first prize in the 2017 Compass Award competition. A book of Dmitri’s translations of Nikolay Zabolotsky’s poetry is coming from Arc Publications in 2023.

Unable to attend the event? Purchase a copy of Disbelief here

FAQs

We will have copies of a book available for purchase at the event.
Seating will be first come, first serve.
This event will be livestreamed.
If you would like a copy of the book without participating in the event, books will be available for pick up at 332 Balboa St. after the event at no extra charge. If you would like the book shipped, additional charges will apply.

Accessibility

The entrance to this event is at street-level with no stairs leading into or out of the venue.
There is only street parking available outside of the venue. Public transportation is encouraged.
Seats are limited.

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