A poetry translation symposium organized by Kevin M.F. Platt of the School of Arts & Sciences and colleagues, in partnership with PEN America, brought a group of Russian-language poets and American translators and scholars together in Armenia last fall.
Each year, WWB is proud to offer a platform to dozens of international writers whose work has never before appeared in English translation. As 2021 comes to an end, we’re looking back at some of the most exciting and innovative voices that WWB introduced to English-language readers this
Young Russophonia: New Literature in Russian
Young, formally inventive, and digital by nature these are only some of the characteristics of Russophone literature today. Here, we present Russophone writers born in 1985 or later who work in shorter genres, from minimalistic flash fiction and protest poetry to visual performance. This issue is not a collection of “Russian literature” because many of its contributors are not ethnically Russian, and many are not Russian nationals. What they have in common is their use of the Russian language (among others). Literary scholar Naomi Caffee first proposed the term “Russophonia” to describe the fact that authors writing in Russian come from a range of non-Russian backgrounds, including Indigenous communities in post-Soviet countries and émigré communities around the world. The predominance of women writers in this issue is indicative of a trend within these communities: much exciting Russophone literature today is not produced by me
About Time to Smile at Homeless People
Dinara Rasuleva questions received notions of home and national identity in this poem about her relationship to Russia.
Video: This video was created by the Russian-language, Berlin-based TV channel OstWest for a series called Living Poets Society, which featured contemporary Russophone poets living in Germany. Used with permission from OstWest.
i don’t fall because i’m audacious like america,
because i’m as agile as youtube aerobics,
it’s just a shame about the pants, just a shame the pants ripped.
they offered me twice the work with no raise, and i took it