Poetry During the Siege of Leningrad - Tufts Russian Program
Written in The Dark: Writing Poetry During the Siege of Leningrad
The Russian Program at Tufts University
Medford, Massachusetts
Friday March 3rd 5:00 pm
180, Packers Ave, Medford
Olin Hall, Room 007
Добрый день всем! Полина Барскова, поэт и исследователь ленинградской блокады будет читать из и рассказывать o новой антологии неофициальной поэзии блокады в Тафтском Университете в Бостоне. Детали внизу. Если кому-то интересны подробности, пишите мне в личку или на marina.aptekman@tufts.edu
Polina Barskova, an Associate Professor at Hampshire College and a renown contemporary poet will presents a literary phenomenon that has been unknown even to Russian readers for 70 years, obfuscated by historical amnesia, the "unofficial" poetic works written in Leningrad between 1941-1944. These works, collected now in a translated anthology and supported by archival materials, present a striking contrast to state-sanctioned, heroic "Blockade" poetry in which the stoic body of the exemplary citizen triumphs over death. By contrаst, the poems gathered in the anthology show the Siege individual (blokadnik) as a weak and desperate incarnation of Job. These poets wrote about the famine, disease, madness, cannibalism, and prostitution around them—subjects so tabooed in those most-Soviet times that they would never think of publishing.
The event is free and open to the public. Exact location to be announced later.