Ten Poems from Russia

This latest selection takes us to the heart of human experience with all the passion and drama of the Russian spirit. We find poems of love and poems celebrating the beauty of birch-wood and steppe, alongside poems that touch on the anguish of being a poet in times of political upheaval. Elsewhere, in a previously unpublished poem by Marina Tsvetaeva, a sense of heady pageantry characterises a mother’s hopes for her daughter setting out into the world: “Drink wine, ride troikas, sing loud in the bar-room, be a blue-eyed gypsy, be a temptress.” from ‘To Alya’ by Marina Tsvetaeva

The selection offers a thrilling snapshot of a vast and unique literary landscape and will inevitably leave you wanting more. It is the first co-publication by Candlestick Press in association with Pushkin Press. The new collaboration will see further titles published this year and next. Boris Dralyuk was born in Odessa but has lived in Los Angeles since he was a child. He has translated Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories and also selected and introduced 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution, all for Pushkin Press.

Poems by Anna Akhmatova, Nikolay Gumilyov, Georgy Ivanov, Yuri Kazarnovsky, Mikhail Lermontov, Osip Mandelstam, Julia Nemirovskaya, Boris Pasternak, Alexander Pushkin and Marina Tsvetaeva.