Book description
In 1969 Natalya Gorbanevskaya was sentenced to imprisonment in a
Soviet psychiatric hospital for her dissident activities; in 1972
Carcanet published Daniel Weissbort's first translations of her poems,
with a transcript of her trial.
In this new, enlarged selection of translations he returns to a poet
who has continued, in exile, to engage with the cause of human freedom
and the poetic traditions of her homeland. Anna Akhmatova regarded
Gorbanevskaya as one of the small group of poets who kept Russian
poetry alive. Weissbort, one of the leading translators of Russian
poetry in Britain, expands our understanding of the continuing
vitality of her work. An interview with Valentina Polukhina in which
Gorbanevskaya discusses her life and beliefs provides illuminating context.
Natalya Gorbanevskaya was
born in Moscow in 1936. Expelled from Moscow University, she graduated
from the Philology Department of Leningrad University. She was
arrrested in 1968 for protesting against the Soviet-led invasion of
Czechoslovakia. Gorbanevskaya now lives in Paris, where until 2001 she
worked for the Russian émigré newspaper Russkaya mysl. She has
published a number of poetry collections in Europe and the USA since
leaving Russia.
Daniel Weissbort edited the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation,
which he co-founded with the late Ted Hughes, from 1965-2003. He is
Emeritus Professor, University of Iowa, where he directed the MFA
Program in Translation. Currently, he is Honorary Professor in the
Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies at the
University of Warwick. Weissbort has published numerous collections of
translations and has edited several anthologies and collections of his
own poetry, most recently Letters to Ted (Anvil, 2003).
