Natalya Gorbanevskaya is a living legend of Russian poetry, whose poems were widely circulated in the Samizdat underground press of the 1960’s. After taking part in the demonstration on Red Square against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Gorbanevskaya was forced to leave the USSR, settling in Paris. There she played a major role in several key émigré publications, including Kontinent and Russkaya Mysl. She was recently awarded Polish citizenship as a token of gratitude for her contribution to Polish culture, which includes translations of Norwid, Miłosz and other Polish classics.
To mark the occasion of Gorbanevskaya’s 70th birthday, a collection of her new poems, entitled China Rose, has been published in the Poets of the Russian Diaspora series. At first sight, these poems may seem ascetic and traditional, but deeper examination reveals a rare euphonic elegance and a fearless attitude to contemporary issues. The book is supplemented with several poem cycles written in octaves, and is the first time all Gorbanevskaya’s works in this form have been collected in one volume. In the preface, Danila Davydov, a leader of the generation of younger poets, reflects on Gorbanevskaya’s inconspicuous innovations.

Born in 1968, since 1991 Arseny Rovinsky has lived in Denmark. First published in Russia in 1997, his work drew wide critical acclaim a year later: the “Teneta” Internet writing competition brought Rovinsky a special prize from Mikhail Aisenberg, one of the judges. 1999 saw the publication of Sobiratelniye Obrazy (Collective Images), a short book of poems from the competition.
It is interesting to note that Rovinsky’s work offers no clues as to the poet’s surroundings. Not only is Denmark never mentioned, it is not once hinted at: no Danish landmarks or features of local life have made their way into his poems. As a result, the country becomes a kind of ideal foreign land – a material nothingness. Focussing instead on problems of geopolitics, primarily on the fate of Russia, Rovinsky introduces his lyrical subject into a framework of historical drama or catastrophe: in his poems, even everyday life in Russia verges on the catastrophic.

The fall of the Soviet Union put an end to the enforced division of writers into residents of the motherland and emigrants. The new situation brought freedom of artistic self-determination and creative interaction across state borders, regardless of distance, yet informed by the cultural, linguistic and natural surroundings of the writer if required. The Russian literature of the former national borderlands gained a new status, whilst many Russian poets worldwide were faced with the issue of their new identity. Indeed, what exactly was now Russian writing in Israel, Germany, the USA or the Ukraine? Were there any aesthetic or mental links drawing together writers physically resident in a country to form a single cultural phenomenon? Presenting the diverse “faces” of Russian poetry created outside Russia after 1991, this anthology includes works by 244 authors from 26 countries.