Four Emerging Russian Poets: Igor Belov, Viktor Ivaniv, Fedor Svarovskiy, Ksenia Shcherbino

Monday, April 18, 7pm – Poetry

The Program in Comparative Literature at UPenn presents

Four Emerging Russian Poets:

Igor Belov, Viktor Ivaniv, Fedor Svarovskiy, Ksenia Shcherbino
Please join us for an evening of cutting-edge Russian poetry in connection with the University of Pennsylvania’s poetry symposium, “Your language – my ear: Russian and American poetry at close quarters” (In Russian: Твой яэык – мое ухо: Русскя и Американская поэзия в непосредственном соприконовении) Four emerging poets from locations spanning Russia will read will read their poems in the original, with English speakers providing parallel readings in translation.

Igor Belov was born in 1975 in St. Petersburg and currently lives in Kaliningrad. He is the author of two books of poetry: All That Jazz and Music Not For Fat People. His original poems and translations of Polish, Ukranian and Belarussian poetry have been published in a number of literary journals. He describes his writing as “emotional urban lyric poetry,” saying “Some critics claim that I have evolved from metaphorical surrealism to everyday grotesque, while others describe my work as expressive and stylish ‘jazz poetry’. I think both are right.”

Viktor Ivaniv was born in 1977 in Novosibirsk. He is the author of two books of prose and a collection of poetry. He has been short-listed for the Debut Prize (poetry category) and Andrei Bely Prize (prose category). Danila Davidov says of Ivaniv, “His poetry reminds me of wind, which has been furled to the limit and turned into a coil spring, and is about to tear free from the structure imposed upon it. The magician – that is, the author – endeavors to constantly keep this wind in its place, his efforts are strenuous but invisible to the eye, carried out elegantly and at the same time firmly.”

Fedor Svarovskiy was born in Moscow in 1971, is a journalist who has worked for the Russian television channels ORT and NTV as well as print media. His poems have been published in the journals Kreschyatik, Vozdukh, Noviy Mir, SHO and the Russian Esquire, Svarovskiy’s first book of poetry Everyone Wants to Be a Robot received the Moskovskiy Schyot prize and was shortlisted for the Andrei Bely prize. Svarovskiy’s poetry has been translated into English, Bulgarian, Danish, Polish, Slovenian and Ukranian.

Ksenia Shcherbino is a poet and prose writer. She describes her poetry as “myth-making, myth-poetry, combining storytelling elements from fairytale traditions and the culture of technology; purposeful grammatical distortion to achieve the “purity” of children’ speech; building a new cultural code that allows [for the unfolding of] a person’s cultural background into a collection of stories, like a kaleidoscope.” Shcherbino works as a cultural correspondent for the Kultura television channel and has translated several books on cultural studies. She is also a visual artist who has had several solo exhibitions.

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