Poetry of Crisis and Resistance: Russophone Authors Condemning Russia's War in Ukraine

Julia Nemirovskaya will delve into the extraordinary surge of anti-war poetry produced by Russophone voices in Ukraine, Russia, the broader post-Soviet space, and the global diaspora

Location: William Bragg SR G.18

Speakers: Julia Nemirovskaya, Richard Coombes

Julia Nemirovskaya, a Moscow-born poet, prose writer, and literary scholar, will speak at our upcoming event, "Poetry of Crisis and Resistance: Russophone Authors Condemning Russia's War in Ukraine." Julia has been writing and collecting protest poetry by Russophone authors in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022. She has curated the collection in two Russian-English bilingual anthologies, co-edited with a team of translators from the US, UK, and Canada: Disbelief (Smokestack Books, 2022) and Dislocation (Slavica, 2024). Julia will be joined by the translator Richard Coombes, one of the contributors to both anthologies.

 

In the talk, Julia will delve into the extraordinary surge of anti-war poetry produced by Russophone voices in Ukraine, Russia, the broader post-Soviet space, and the global diaspora. She will examine recurring themes in this body of work, as well as the evolution of poetic styles shaped by the ongoing conflict. Julia will also reflect on the cultural and historical significance of this wave of creativity. Richard will discuss the challenges of translating Russophone poetry and the diverse styles within the collection.

As part of the presentation, Julia will analyse and discuss several individual poems, reading selected works in English translation. 

The talk will conclude with a Q&A session, where Julia and Richard look forward to engaging with the audience to further explore the poetry and themes addressed in the presentation.

Julia Nemirovskaya is a poet, prose writer, and literary scholar. She graduated from the Department of Philology at Moscow State University in 1985 and defended her Ph.D. dissertation there in 1991, focusing on the structure of Pushkin’s late poems in comparison with the poems of Évariste de Parny. 

As one of the “New Wave Poets” of the 1980s–90s, she was a member of the renowned Kovaldzhi seminar and the Moscow Poetry Club. Since 1988, she has lived in Sweden and, since 1991, in the USA. She has published four collections of verse and short stories, a novel, and a book on Russian cultural history, Inside the Russian Soul: An Historical Survey of Russian Cultural Patterns (McGraw-Hill, 1997, 2001), as well as two anthologies of protest wartime poetry, Disbelief (Smokestack Books, 2022) and Dislocation (co-edited with A. Krushelnitskaya, Slavica Publishers, 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 theatres across Russia, the US, Germany, and France. 

She currently teaches and directs student theater at the University of Oregon.

Richard Coombes has been a classics scholar, a musician, and an international tax specialist, and is now a literary translator. Richard’s published translations include short stories and poetry in literary journals; poetry in the bilingual World War II poetry collection Poems from the Front; and poetry in the bilingual anti-war anthologies Disbelief and Dislocation. Richard’s translations of Elena Dolgopyat’s short story collection Someone Else’s Life and The Food Block (a novel by Alexei Ivanov) are now available worldwide. Soon to be published is Pavel Basinsky’s documentary-thriller Liza’s Waterfall. Currently, Richard is collaborating with the Ukrainian novelist Anna Bugayeva, pitching her latest novel I Am Your Enemy. Richard’s published translations to date have largely been from Russian. He expects to translate increasingly from Ukrainian in 2025 and beyond. 

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Richard has been teaching English to Ukrainian refugees.