I wish this festival were taking place next door or, at the very least, within two-hour commuting distance. Five full days of poetry events, both local and international, in St. Andrews, Scotland. The line-up includes three Russian poets: Elena Fanailova, Maria Galina and Aleksandra Petrova. I came across the work of Fainalova and Petrova in the outstanding anthology Crossing Centuries: The New Russian Poetry, published in 2000 by Talisman House. It is one of the best anthologies of any kind that I have come across. If it had been a bilingual edition it would have been perfect--but, at almost 1000 pgs, a little too bulky. The range of translations is impressive--ninety poets, fifty translators--and it also includes several insightful essays that provide historical and cultural context. These essays are interspersed throughout to give a sense of the shifts and changes in Russian poetry and its emerging diaspora in the twentieth century.
The StAnza site also provides sample poems and brief biographies for many of the poets. You can read Petrova's "Jerusalem" poem "Tarantino's languor and dreaming back" (translated by Dennis Silk), Fanailova "Better this way: it's you with nothing to hold onto" (trans. Stephanie Sandler), and Galina's "I said to him--don't throw me into this prickly bush" (also translated by Sandler). Now if they post podcasts of the readings it almost will feel like I had been there.
*Fanailova will be reading with three other Russian poets at The Bowery Poetry Club on April 1 (free to the public)
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