In the Grip of Strange Thoughts

Russian’s political revolution of 1990 set off a cultural earthquake of unprecedented impact. But there were tremors four years before. The whole country saw the cracks starting to appear which eventually resulted in the overthrow of the old system, and the collapse of the confining roofs of direction and repression. This anthology shows how a new generation of Russian poets responded first to that evolving cultural shift and then to the difficult freedoms of a new era. No longer constrained by bureaucracy or ideology, these writers are producing a new literature of great energy and diversity. Working in styles ranging from traditional to avant-garde to postmodern, they depict the cascading changes in Russian life and culture – through the most intimate details of private lives to the larger images of a nation forging a new path for itself. Russian-English bilingual edition. The book includes work by over 30 poets, with facing English versions by some of the most distinguished translators from Britain and America. The poets include Gennady Aygi, Bella Akhmadulina, Mikhail Aizenberg, Tatiana Bek, Dimitry Bobyshev, Bella Dizhur, Arkadii Dragomoshenko, Sergey Gandlevsky, Elena Ignatova, Fazil Iskander, Nina Iskrenko, Bakhyt Kenjeev, Viktor Krivulin, Aleksandr Kushner, Yunna Morits, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Olesia Nikolaeva, Bulat Okudzhava, Olga Popova, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov, Irina Ratushinskaya, Evgeny Rein, Genrikh Sapgir, Olga Sedakova, Tatiana Shcherbina, Elena Shvarts, Viktor Sosnora, Sergey Stratanovsky and Mikhail Yeryomin.