Abstract

Putin’s war in Ukraine has been met by outrage and disbelief around the world. Since the start of the war, writers in Russia, Ukraine and the Russian diaspora have been expressing their opposition to the invasion in an extraordinary outpouring of public and private poetry. The book Disbelief presents some of the most moving and hard-hitting of these poems in Russian and English. 100 poems by 70 authors, including Polina Barskova, Tatiana Voltskaya and Mikhail Aizenberg, can be ordered here and here.

In his lectures on Vladimir Vernadsky, Vsevelod Ivanov argued that in the noosphere – the intellectual cloud around the planet – wars and natural disasters create voids which must be filled by the work of poets, artists, musicians, and philosophers. This powerful tragic chorus is just such an attempt, expressing a shared sense of incredulity at a war in the heart of twenty-first century Europe that has left millions displaced and tens of thousands dead or imprisoned; that has triggered an international economic crisis, turned Russia into a pariah state and the Russian language into a tool of cultural erasure and oppression.

The editor with all five translators and some of the poets are ‘coming virtually’ to Cambridge to tell about the project called ‘Piggy-bank’, read a few of the original poems and their translation, and answer questions from CamRuSS audience.

WHEN: 24 February 2023, 19:00 (GMT)

WHERE: online via Zoom, please follow this link to register

TICKETS: Free, donations to CamRuSS for Ukrainians Hardship fund are welcome. You may donate via bank transfer (BACS) to The Cambridge Russian-Speaking Society, NatWest Bank: Sort Code 60-11-30, Account 25395637 or via PayPal

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The artwork on the cover by artist Maria Kazanskaya