Poetry At Chapterhouse Cafe: Your Language My Ear: An Evening With Russian And American Poets At Close Quarters

PLEASE NOTE: This event has an earlier start time than all of our other Chapterhouse events. We will begin at 6:30PM and end around 8:30PM. Your Language—My Ear: Russian and American Poets at Close Quarters A bilingual reading in Russian and English of poetry, by five leading Russian poets from points across the geography of the Russian-Speaking world. This reading presents (some of) the fruits of an intense workshop on poetic translation that is taking place at the University of Pennsylvania from February 26-28, with support of that University’s Kelly Writers House, Slavic Department, Program in Comparative Literature and a Cross-Cultural Conference Grant sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The five featured Russian language poets include: Shamshad Abdullaev (Fergana, Uzbekistan) was born November 1, 1957 in Fergana, Uzbekistan. He graduated from the Fergana Pedagogical Institute in 1979 with a degree in Russian literature. The founder of the “Fergana School” of Russophone poetry, he is the author of four books of poetry, including most recently Approach of Borderlands (2013) and two books of essays. In the early 1990s, he served as the editor of the literary journal Eastern Star. He was winner of the Andrey Bely Prize for poetry in 1993 and twice of the Russian Prize, in 2006 and 2013. He lives and works in Fergana. Polina Barskova (Massachusetts, USA) was born in Petersburg, Russia in 1976. She arrived to the United States in 1998 to enter Graduate School in Russian Literature at UC Berkeley. She has published eight books of poetry in Russian and three in English translation — This Lamentable City (Tupelo Press, 2010), The Zoo in Winter (Melville Press, 2011), and Relocations (Zephyr Press, 2013). Her recent book of prose Tableaux Vivants (2014), published in Petersburg, explores the possibility of a dialogue with historical trauma im/possible today for a Russian/American subject and agent of memory. Barskova teaches Russian literature at Hampshire College and divides her time between Amherst and Brooklyn. Keti Chukhrov (Moscow) – ScD in philosophy, an associate professor at the Department of Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Russian State University for the Humanities and a head of the Theory Department at the National Center for Contemporary Art. Since 2003 she has served on the editorial board of Moscow Art Magazine. Chukhrov has authored numerous texts on art theory, culture, politics, and philosophy. Her full-length books include: To Be – To Perform. ‘Theatre’ in Philosophical Criticism of Art (2011); Pound &£ (1999), and two volumes of dramatic poetry: Just Humans (2010) and War of Quantities (2004). Chukhrov lives and works in Moscow. Her latest performances include: “Communion”, (May Congress 2010; Perm Poetry Festival SlovaNova 2010), “Elpida and the Greeks”, NCCA, in collaboration with Nick Lgovsky and Sergei Epishev (2010), “Afghan Kuzminki” – Theatre.doc, in the frame of the Moscow IV Biennial (curator Andrei Parshchikov), the Small Arsenale, Kiev, in the frame of the Kiev Biennial, and at the Wiener Festwochen. With “Love-machines,” her latest video-play, she participated at the Bergen Assembly. Alexandra Petrova (Rome) was born in Saint Petersburg when it still was called Leningrad, she studied in Tartu, and in 1993 she immigrated to Jerusalem. Since 1998 she has lived in Rome. Her three volumes of poetry are Liniia otryva (in English “Point of Detachment” or “Edge of the Precipice,” 1994), Vid na zhitel’stvo (“License to Live,” “Residence Permit” or “A View on Existence” with introduction by Alexandr Goldshtejn, 1999), Tol’ko derevia (“Only the trees,” introduction by Stephanie Sandler, 2008). She has also published in 2001 a philosophical operetta entitled Pastukhi Dolly (“The Shepherd of Dolly), a play in ten acts that recounts a tale of cloning in pastoral terms. Her works have been published in leading Russian magazines, such as ‘Znamia’, ‘Zerkalo’, Zvezda. Her prose and poems have been translated into several languages. She was short-listed for the Andrei Belyj Prize in 1999 and in 2008. Alexander Skidan (St. Petersburg) was born in Leningrad in 1965. He is a poet, critic, essayist and translator. Skidan attended The Free University (1989–1992), while working as a stoker in the boiler house (1985–2002). His poetry collections include Delirium (1993), In the Re-Reading (1998), Red Shifting (2005) and most recently Dissolution (2010). He is also the author of three books of essays, Critical Mass (1995), The Resistance to/of Poetry (2001), Sum of Poetics (2013) and Theses Toward Politicization of Art (2014). He has translated contemporary American poetry and fiction into Russiаn, as well as theoretical works of Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, Jean-Luc Nancy, Paolo Virno, Gerald Raunig. In 1998 he received the Turgenev Award for short prose. He was winner of Andrey Bely Prize in poetry for the collection Red Shifting (2006) and the Most (“Bridge”) Award for the best critical text on poetry (2006). In 2008 his book Red Shifting was published in USA by Ugly Duckling Presse. He is a member of Chto Delat’? working group and a co-editor of the New Literary Observer magazine. He lives in Saint Petersburg. The poets will be joined by poets/scholars/translators: Marijeta Bozovic (Yale University) Julia Bloch (UPenn) Catherine Ciepiela (Amherst College) Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach (UPenn) James McGavran (UPenn) Kevin M. F. Platt (UPenn) Bob Perelman (UPenn) Ariel Resnikoff (UPenn) Stephanie Sandler (Harvard) Bela Shayevich (Philadelphia) Frank Sherlock (Philadelphia) Alexandra Tatarsky (Philadelphia, New York) Val Vinokour (The New School) Michael Wachtel (Princeton) Ilya Vinitsky (Upenn) Matvei Yankelevich (Ugly Duckling Presse),