Image courtesy of Независимая литературная премия «Дебют»
Among the Russian literary prizes that I like to keep my eye
on is the million-ruble “Debut” («Дебют»),
which is awarded each December to younger writers in six different genres:
novel/novella, short fiction, poetry, drama, essay, and fantasy. The winner in
the poetry category this year was Alexey Porvin, whose name was new to me but probably
shouldn’t have been. Why should I know who he is? Well, Jim
Kates, one of my colleagues from the American Literary Translators Association,
happens to have already published a small collection of Porvin’s poems in English with New Zealand’s Cold Hub Press. Chances are I’ve even
thumbed through it at the ALTA book display.
Jim, who also writes his own original poetry and helps run
Zephyr Press, has done a few books of translations for Cold Hub. One of
them, Genrikh Sapgir’s Psalms, 1965-1966,
is sitting on my desk waiting to be read, and Porvin’s Live by Fire is another. The
publisher’s page for Porvin’s book features Jim’s translation of this
surprisingly unrhymed poem (still a relative rarity in Russian verse):
On the smooth surface of the night
gleaming like a turnstile,
the sudden slot of a sunrise
requires some payment from you.
You want to pass, and you drop
an uneasy token into the interior
of the mechanism that holds up
any movement through here.
The machinery lets passers by
through
to open space, which can take
loving possession of those minds
who have paid their own way
nor will you even recall the
restless
little circle from your pocket,
soul,
because there is far less profit
in constricted passageways.
Translated from the Russian by J. Kates
