Russian Voices Reading: Sergey Gandlevsky and Katia Kapovich

“Poetry in an age of Totalitarianism”: Join us for a reading and conversation with Russian poets Sergey Gandlevsky and Katia Kapovich. Moderated by Daria Khitrova, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University.

An integral member of the ’70s Generation, Sergey Gandlevsky (born in 1952) was one of the underground Russian poets who began by writing only for themselves and their circles of friends during the Brezhnev era. Despite their relative cultural obscurity—or perhaps, precisely because of their situation as internal émigrés– Gandlevsky and the ’70s Generation forged new directions in Russian poetry, unfettered by the pressures that burdened Russian writers both prior to, and during, the Soviet period. Gandlevsky, like many of the underground, chose unprestigious careers, or even odd jobs both to avoid participating in what he saw as a morally bankrupt society, while freeing up time for writing and travel. Gandlevsky has since become one of the most important contemporary Russian poets, winning both the Little Booker Prize and the Anti-Booker Prize in 1996 for his poetry and prose.

Katia Kapovich is a bilingual writer of poetry and short fiction. She is the author of eight Russian collections and of two volumes of English verse, Gogol in Rome (Salt, 2004, shortlisted for England’s 2005 Jerwood Alderburgh Prize) and Cossacks and Bandits (Salt, 2008). Kapovich hails from Soviet Moldova where her membership in a samizdat dissident group precluded publication of her writing in the USSR. Upon settling down in the USA in 1992, Kapovich began writing in English as well. Her English language poetry has appeared in the London Review of Books, Poetry, The New Republic, Harvard Review, The Independent, Jacket, and numerous other periodicals, as well as in several anthologies including Best American Poetry 2007 and Poetry 180 (Random House).

A reception with live music will follow the event. Free and open to the public.