FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 9, 2005
CONTACT: Alisha Kirchoff, CREECA Events Coordinator 608-262-3379 or events@creeca.wisc.edu
Madison, WI – Renowned Russian poet Sergey Gandlevsky will visit the UW-Madison
campus, the Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia announced today.
Gandlevsky, who is considered by many as the most important poet living in
Russia today, will give a poetry reading and discuss his work Monday, October
3 at 12:00 noon in room 1418 Van Hise, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison. The event
is free and open to the public.
Born in 1952 in Moscow, Gandlevsky was an important
figure in underground poetry circles during the 1970’s but he was little known
across or outside
of the U.S.S.R. Since the late 1980’s, however, and with perestroika and the
collapse of the Soviet Union, Gandlevsky has become well known, winning both
the Little Booker Prize and the Anti-Booker prize in 1996 for his collection
of poetry “Trepanation of the Skull.” He is the author of several books of poems,
a memoir and a collection of essays.
Gandlevsky’s poetry has been called both
formal and populist, connecting contemporary subject matter to Russia’s
deep poetical traditions. Acknowledging the influences of Russian literary
greats such as Nabokov, Pushkin, and Lermontov,
Gandlevsky is able to integrate Soviet-era slang and pop-cultural references,
creating verse that is uniquely his.
Gandlevsky will be accompanied by translator Philip Metres, a professor of
English at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio and himself a poet. Metres
translated and edited Gandlevsky’s collection “A Kindred Orphanhood.” Of
the book, author Andrei Codrescu has said, “Out of the Rubik’s Cube of
Russia rise the complex strains of Sergey Gandlevsky. Superb translations that
uncannily make the Russian ours.”
The event is being sponsored by the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central
Asia and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature.