Kiktenko in Ozone Park

 Abstract post-graffiti calligraphy by Nuno de Matos / Image courtesy of Ozone Park Journal

Two of my translations of poems by Vyacheslav Kiktenko appear in the Fall 2010 issue of Ozone Park Journal, which is put out by the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at CUNY's Queens College. Susan Bernofsky, a brilliant translator, spent the fall semester as a visiting professor in the program, which she describes in an article she wrote for Words Without Borders.

With any luck, Kiktenko's Cyrillic texts will be posted on the Ozone site soon. For now, you can read the originals here ("Заброшенный парк" and "Мальчик стоит и дивится").

Thanks to ALTA, Roger Sedarat, and Jolie Hale for making this happen!

Origins (with a nod to Lizok and Mandelstam)

 

Osip Mandelstam / Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

This blog owes its existence to another blog on Russian literature: Lisa Hayden Espenschade’s Lizok’s Bookshelf. The difference between this one and that one is quite simple: while Lisa focuses on fiction, I intend to focus on poetry. I have been reading Lizok’s Bookshelf for many months now, and I count myself grateful for the insight that Lisa gives me into contemporary Russian novels and stories. Unfortunately, no English-language blogger seems to be providing the same readerly view into contemporary Russian poetry. In an e-mail exchange a few months ago, Lisa suggested that, since I’m the one who noticed the gap, I might as well be the one to fill it. So I’ve decided to take her up on that challenge.

If I’m going to use Lizok’s Bookshelf as a model, I’ve got my work cut out for me. Lisa seems to read just about every piece of fiction being published in Russia, and I’m afraid I may not be able to present such a comprehensive view of poetry. Translating Russian poems into English is something that I do almost every day, but I don’t typically read widely in contemporary Russian poetry, as Lisa does in Russian fiction. The sort of reading that I do as a translator is much narrower—scanning new poems to get a quick sense of their nature and keeping always on the lookout for writers whose poems somehow resonate with me. Then I go deeply into the work of those kindred poets. But I will need to broaden my reading habits if I want to give English readers a taste of what’s out there in the world of Russian poetry. I’ll do my best.