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From Disbelief to Dislocation to Rupture: Ukrainian and Russian Poets Against Russia’s War of Aggression
March 14 @ 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
We are inviting you to a seminar by Julia Nemirovsksaya, a poet, prose writer, and literary scholar.
The seminar will take place on Friday, March 14,t 2-3:30 pm at Harvard University, S250, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street.
From Disbelief to Dislocation to Rupture: Ukrainian and Russian Poets Against Russia’s War of Aggression
Julia Nemirovskaya has been collecting protest poems since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. In her talk, Julia Nemirovskaya will explore the phenomenon of the current abundance of anti-war poetry composed by Russophone authors in Ukraine, Russia and other parts of the former USSR, as well as in the diaspora. She will explore the style and some of the themes that have emerged in this poetry. Julia will discuss the significance of this great outburst of poetic creativity, as reflected in the two anthologies she has published with a group of translators: Disbelief (Smokestack Books, 2022) and Dislocation (Slavica, 2024).
After this overview of recent anti-war poetry, Julia will provide an analysis of several individual poems, and a Q&A session.
Julia Nemirovskaya graduated from Moscow State University and defended her Ph.D. dissertation there in 1991. Before emigrating to the U.S. in 1991, she was a member of the renowned Kovaldzhi “New Wave Poets” seminar and the Moscow Poetry Club. She has been active in the literary scene, reading her work at the Poetic Biennales and other venues in the US, UK, Europe, and Russia. She has published four collections of poetry and short stories, a novel, and a book on Russian cultural history, Inside the Russian Soul: A Historical Survey of Russian Cultural Patterns (McGraw-Hill, 1997, 2001), and two anthologies of anti-war poetry, Disbelief (Smokestack Books, London, 2023) and Dislocation (Slavica, Bloomington, Indiana, 2024). Her work has appeared in Asymptote, GLAS, Literary Review, Znamya, LRS-Lettres Russes, Bonniers Litterära Magasin, and elsewhere, and has been translated into several European languages. Her 26 plays have been staged in theaters across Russia, the U.S., Germany, and France. Mother of three, she lives in the US, regularly travels to her youngest child’s native Ethiopia, and teaches and directs student theater at the University of Oregon.
Books:
- Inside the Russian Soul: A Historical Survey of Russian Cultural Patterns, New York: McGraw- Hill, 1997, 551 pp.; 2nd Revised Edition, 2001, 632 pp.
- Moia knizhechka, A Collection of Verses. A & B Publishers, Moscow, 1998.
- Vtoraia knizhechka, A Collection of Verses. Vodolei Publishers, Moscow, 2014.
- Lis, A Novel. Vodolei Publishers, Moscow, 2017.
- Slyshnee, Complete Works, Poetry. Vodolei Publishers, Moscow, 2021.
- Tela Net, Complete Prose Works. Vodolei Publishers, Moscow, 2021.
- Disbelief: 100 Anti-War Poets, Ed. by. Julia Nemirovskaya. Smokestack Books, London, 2022.
- Dislocation: An Anthology of Poetic Response to Russia’s War in Ukraine, Ed. By Julia Nemirovskaya and Anna Krushlnitskaya. Slavica Publishers, Indiana University, 2024.