Reading Aloud: Russian Poetry of the 1990s and 2000s

Date

Schedule

Fridays, 19:30–21:00

Place

Garage Education Center

DESCRIPTION

Garage Library is launching a new season of Reading Aloud. This season of public readings, organised in collaboration with Kulturnaya Initsiativa, is devoted to Russian poetry of the 1990s and 2000s: the landmark collections and anthologies of the two decades will be presented by their editors and contributors.

For Russian poetry, the 1990s were the time of radical change. A new generation of authors grew out of the new social and cultural regime that offered free access to books unpublished during the Soviet years. Cultural hierarchies of the previous era were being questioned and reconsidered.

Independent and non-profit publishers came onto the scene. Collections and book series released by the new publishing initiatives in the 1990s and 2000s formed a new landscape by discovering new names and supporting authors whose work had stood the test of time. Documenting the seminal events and phenomena of the two decades, these publishing projects have effectively shaped contemporary Russian poetry.

Readers will include poets, critics and publishers: Mikhail Ayzenberg, Alexey Alyokhin, Dmitry Kuzmin, Vadim Mesyats, Gleb Morev, Boris N. Pasternak and Alexander Pereverzin among others.   

The ten evenings of the program will be devoted to anthologies such as Citizens of the Night, Nine Dimensions and Ulysses Liberated, and poetry series published by Projekt OGI, Pushkinsky Fond, Arion, Andrei Bely Prize, Vremya, AGRO-RISK, Voymega and Russkiy Gulliver.

ORGANIZED WITH

Kulturnaya Initsiativa is an independent creative project launched in 2004 by Yury Tsvetkov and Danil Fayzov. Its key activities include organizing literary events, conferences, seminars and panel discussions, co-organizing Moscow Poetry Biennale and supporting poetry festivals in the regions. In 2006, Kulturnaya Initsiativa was awarded an honorary certificate from Oktyabr magazine, and in 2009 it was included on the short list of Andrey Bely Prize.

HOW TO TAKE PART

Free admission with advance registration.

Schedule

Citizens of the Night: The Unknown Russia, published by SP Vsya Moskva

A close friend of Olga Chugay, poet and writer Nina Gabrielyan will talk about the making of the book, while Evgeny Bunimovich, Olga Postnikova, Sergey Preobrazhensky, Arkady Shtypel, and other authors featured in the collection will read their poetry.

Published in 1990, Citizens of the Night was the first collection of poetry to be released after the end of state censorship. The book, conceived and edited by Olga Chugay (1944–2015), contained pieces by previously unpublished poets, who are now considered among the most important authors of the era: Evgeny Bunimovich, Timur Kibirov, Bakhyt Kenzheev and Alexey Tsvetkov among others.

REGISTRATION

Date
Friday, February 3
Time
19:30–21:00
Place
Garage Atrium