Russian-Language War Poetry: Three Years Later

Julia Nemirovskaya and Josephine von Zitzewitz in conversation with Jessy Kaner, with an introduction by Robert Chandler.

Poetry is a medium that responds quickly and concisely to current events. It fulfils many roles – outcry, therapy, manifesto, witness account, act of resistance, political statement, philosophical meditation and more. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has triggered an outpouring of Russian-language anti-war poetry by recent and long-term expatriates from Russia and the post-Soviet space, poets still in the Russian Federation, and Ukrainians who write in Russian. This outpouring may be unprecedented in the history of world literature, in the context of reactions to ongoing wars of empire and colonialism.

Three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the variety of anti-war texts is now greater than ever and has been chronicled in many online and print publications. This event will focus on the bilingual volumes Disbelief and Dislocation. The poems in these volumes are sourced from the Kopilka project, a growing archive of current anti-war poetry founded in February 2022.

Julia Nemirovskaya, the editor of both Disbelief and Dislocation and founder of the Kopilka project, and Josephine von Zitzewitz, a member of the Kopilka translation team and one of its chroniclers, will reflect on literature as a response to trauma, translation as both scholarly and political practice, and poetry as a means of resistance and a way to sustain hope. The event will include a poetry reading and a Q&A session.

The conversation will be moderated by BBC World Service journalist Jessy Kaner and introduced by poet and translator Robert Chandler.

This is a Pushkin Club event, and all are welcome.

Host or Publisher Pushkin House