Monday, November 11, 2013

NYC Launch of Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry

You are cordially invited to the New York City launch of the new anthology Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry

featuring readings by poets and translators Alexander Cigale, Vladimir Druk, Dana Golin, Irina Mashinski, Misha Semenov, Alexander Stessin, and Alexei Tsvetkov.

Sponsored by Intercultural Poetry at Cornelia hosted by Andrey Gritsman and the Russian American Cultural Center.

Wednesday, December 11, 6:00 - 8:00 pm
The Cornelia Street Cafe
29 Cornelia
New York, NY
Contact: 212-712-9865

Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry is edited by Larissa Shmailo and published by Big Bridge Press.

Tuesday, November 05, 2013

Review of Elaine Equi's Click and Clone in The Brooklyn Rail

Tarot, magic, and technology: My review of Elainé Equi's latest collection of poetry, Click and Clone, is now up at The Brooklyn Rail: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/11/books/a-spiders-mirror-click-and-clone

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Madhat Live Presents Two Extraordinary Readings This Friday and Saturday

I hope you will join me for two extraordinary readings.

First, this Friday, November 1 at Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, I am delighted to be reading with:

Terese Svoboda, author of five books of poetry, six novels, the 2007 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize-winning memoir Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, a book of translation, and over a hundred published short stories. She recently published two novels, Pirate Talk or Mermelade (Dzanc Books, 2010) and Bohemian Girl (Bison Books, 2011).

Yuriy Tarnawsky, author of twenty collections of poetry, eight books of fiction, seven plays, a biography, as well as numerous articles and translations, his English language books include the novel Three Blondes and Death, a collection of stories Short Tails, three collections of mininovels The Placebo Effect Trilogy, the play Not Medea, and Modus Tollens (Jaded Ibis).

Marc Vincenz, author ofThe Propaganda Factory, or Speaking of Trees (2011); Gods of a Ransacked Century (Unlikely Books, 2013), Mao's Mole (Neopoiesis Press, 2013) and forthcoming, Beautiful Rush (Unlikely Books, 2014) and a meta-novel, Behind the Wall at the Sugar Works (Spuyten Duyvil, 2014).

Marthe Reed, author of pleth (Unlikely Books, 2013), (em)bodied bliss (Moria Books 2013), Gaze (Black Radish Books) and Tender Box, A Wunderkammer (Lavender Ink), and forthcoming in 2014 Nights Reading (Lavender Ink). She publishes Black Radish Books with Nicole Mauro and with Jonathan Penton is Managing Editor of the newly revived journal Fulcrum Poetry.

Then Saturday, November 2, a fabulous line-up of FIVE POETS at Sidewalk on Avenue A and hosted by yours truly!!

Marc Vincenz and Marthe Reed (see above) and:

Susana Gardner is the author of the full-length poetry collections CADDISH (Xexoxial Editions, 2013), HERSO (Black Radish Books, 2011) and [ LAPSED INSEL WEARY ] (The Tangent Press, 2008). She recently left Zürich, Switzerland and moved to Rhode Island, where she also edits and curates the online poetics journal and experimental kollektiv press, Dusie.

Michael Ruby is a poet and journalist who lives in Brooklyn. He's the author of two poetry books, At an Intersection and Window on the City, and the editor of Washtenaw County Jail and Other Writings by David Herfort.

Ocean Vuong is the author of two chapbooks: No (YesYes Books, 2013) and Burnings (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2010), which was an American Library Association’s Over The Rainbow selection and has been taught widely in universities, both in America and abroad. A recipient of a 2013 Pushcart Prize, other honors include fellowships from Kundiman, Poets House, and the Saltonstall Foundation For the Arts.

I hope you will join us!

Sunday, October 20, 2013

#specialcharacters to Be Published by Unlikely Books

I'm pleased that my second full-length poetry collection, #specialcharacters will be published by Unlikely Books!

http://www.unlikelystories.org/unlikely_books/

Thanks to publisher Jonathan Penton and my new Unlikely peeps for this opportunity.

Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Imaginary Bios of The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses

By popular demand (well, six people asked me), I am sharing my imaginary bios for the Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses, read 9/28 at Tribes.

Amy King won the Golden Globe for best leading role in the film version of I Am the Man Who Loves You. In September 2013, the artificial intelligence app she designed became self-aware when Goodreads, the Poetics List, and the Wompo group merged into a blog named Alias, which promptly took over the world and inherited a tidy sum to boot. According to Vida statistics, Amy is the poet most admired by female writers under 90. Amy is currently working on her memoir entitled John Ashbery Blurbed Me.

In 2013, Alexander Cigale translated War and Peace into Bashkir, the complete works of Osip Mandelstam into Chuvash, and 147 asemic poets from Smolensk into Old English. He is a professor at 14 Eurasian universities and is the translation editor for the Antioch Review, the Atlantic Review, the Antediluvian Review, and the Antidisestablishmentarian Review. In 2014, Alex plans to translate everything that begins with B.

According to the Boston Review, Sarah Sarai has a Beard of Bees, but sources at Literary Lambda say that this has not come out yet. In 2012, twelve people died of joy listening to her poetry. Sarah's poetic ear has been insured by Lloyd's of London for three million dollars. According to sources close to the poet, Sarah "writes what she likes."

Tim Trace Peterson is the editor of 19 prestigious journals, included EEE, and Agh, and e-i-e-i-o. Trace is the winner of four consecutive awards Transubstantiation Awards for enlightened poetic sensibility and best hair at a reading. A popular instructor of graduate students in literature, Trace has actually been known to demand equal pay for equal lecturing, which has earned Trace the nickname Third Wave Joe and Anita Hill. Trace's followers espouse Trace's radical thinking, which says people have the right to be who they want to be

Patricia Spears Jones is a Rhodes Scholar best known for her work on the ecology of the White Pine. In 2013, Patricia attended 4,827 readings in the New York City area, 4,826 of them as a featured reader. Patricia is known as Arkansas's sole cultural resource, and has received the Marx Award for best dactyl, the Veblein Award for assonance, Jeremy Bentham Award for Hidden Meaning, and three grants from the Society of Slant Rhymes. She will anthologize this reading.

Elizabeth Macklin won an Amy Lowell Traveling Poet Award, which she used to live among the Romani in Czechoslovakia, who consider the poet semi-divine. At the New Yorker, Elizabeth was used as an arbiter of taste, with the famous Macklin "no way, Jose Brodksy" being the final word on poetic acceptance. A strict editor of her own work, Elizabeth has been known to discard a book-length poem for one bad iamb. Currently, Elizabeth teaches songbirds to sing.

Dana Golin fled Tashkent when her cover as an university professor was blown and she was discovered to be leaking sensitive Uzbek intelligence to Wikileaks. Here in the United States, she is primarily known as a psychic who channels unpublished work of Anna Ahkmatova for literary circles. As a poet, she is best known by the moniker "Brodsky's kid sister." In 2014, she will teach the city of Hoboken Russian.

Audrey Roth is a poet who writes her work on baseball cards; informed sources say that her verse led the Miracle Mets to victory in 1969. Her friends wonder whether she is a mother or a lawyer, or a mother of a lawyer. A yoga practitioner, Audrey often stands with arms akimbo. It is said that Hilary is looking at Audrey for Vice President, or possibly just for vice. Audrey enjoys running with bulls and plugging dykes.

Susan Lewis is a poet and psychiatrist with a practice focusing on disturbed haberdashers. Sources close to Susan say she is responsible for curing the otolith issues of over three thousand experimental poets. Her additional expertise is in being another poet and in giving state of the union addresses. Friends posit that Susan will have edited 800 online journals by 2015.

The Road Less Trampled: The 12 Steps of Indie Publishing



Please check out my new humor column, "The Road Less Trampled: The 12 Steps of Indie Publishing," up at IndieReader now!

http://indiereader.com/2013/09/the-road-less-trampled

Friday, September 27, 2013

Otherstream Anthology, Shadows of the Future, now available as a free e-book!



I am thrilled to have my poems "Oscillation," "Shore," and "Williamsburg Poem" appear in the new anthology of the Otherstream writing group, Shadows of the Future, edited by Marc Vincenz and published by Jeffrey Side of The Argotist Online. I'm especially pleased to have three collaborations with Chris Mansel, written on Facebook, included in this book.

The anthology is free and you are welcome to disseminate widely and wildly.

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/SHADOWS%20OF%20THE%20FUTURE.pdf

My prose poem, "Fall," appears on MadHat Lit

Read my poem, "Fall," on MadHat Lit

http://madhatlit.com/poem-by-larissa-shmailo/

or here:

Fall

(Note: Creation, as calculated by Bishop James Ussher, was the night preceding Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC —which means the fall, Eve’s fall, the day when she stared into the eyes of the saurian and said, yes, yes, I will, might have been an autumn day.)

Later that fall, knowing then the cold, the clothing of autumn air with leaves, always remembering the snake, his blandishments and begging, his coaxing: fall. And she goes down again to that place like warm down in the fallow recesses of this season of iridescent light playing on the water’s edge, dimming in the crepuscule over rotting apples, burst brown in the decaying arms of the fall; in this season unknown in the jejune days of the garden, where all was perpetually young, perpetually whole, without blemish or age, where gravity had no power and nothing needed to fail and fall in the imperfections of loss and overripe flesh.

The apples glisten in the dying sun. She sees a small viper dart into the pile of fruit.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

Voice of Russia Radio Interview on Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry

Dear Friends:

Below please find a link to an interview on the Moscow-based radio show Russian Bookworld on Voice of Russia on the subject of contemporary Russian poetry and our new anthology, Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry. The interview is with myself, Larissa Shmailo, editor of the anthology; Marina Boroditskaya, a contributing poet to the anthology; and Philip Nikolayev, who contributed both poetry and translations. The interview was hosted by Konstantin Boulevich.

Listen to the interview here: http://voiceofrussia.com/radio_broadcast/28742746/239869305/

The online anthology may be accessed here: http://bigbridge.org/BB17/poetry/twentyfirstcenturyrussianpoetry/twenty-first-century-russian-poetry-contents.html

Another interview is planned on VOR this month.

I hope you enjoy our discussion!

Kind regards,
Larissa

The Unbearables and the Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses Are Watching You!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contacts: Larissa Shmailo (212) 712-9865 slidingsca@aol.com
Ron Kolm (718) 721-0946 kolmrank@verizon.net

The Unbearables and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses Perform for Global Event: 100 Thousand Poets for Change

@ A Gathering of the Tribes 285 E. 3rd Street (between Avenues C and D), NYC Saturday, September 28, 7:00 – 10:00 pm
Donation

New York City's irrepressible literary clans present writing on the theme of surveillance.


New York City: The Unbearables (“a drinking group with a writing problem”) and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses (“we live with the contradictions of feminism”) sound off at the Lower-East-Side literary landmark A Gathering of the Tribes on September 28, 2013, at 7:00 p.m. as part of the global arts celebration 100 Thousand Poets for Change.

With rants, humor, avant-garde poetry, and more than a little outrageousness, the two famous New York City literary clans will perform work on this year's theme of surveillance: "The Unbearables and The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses Are Watching You! (Being Watched!)".

Curated by Ron Kolm and Larissa Shmailo, the show features a diverse group of noted poets and writers, including Amy King, Steve Dalachinsky, Yuko Otomo, John M. Bennett, Thad Rutkowski, Patricia Spears Jones, Mike Topp, Sparrow, Tim Trace Peterson, Sarah Sarai, Chavisa Woods, Alex Cigale, Susan Lewis, Lana Wiggins, and many others. The festivities are emceed by Jim Feast.

September 28 marks the third annual global event of 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a grassroots movement that brings poets, artists, and musicians together worldwide to call for environmental, social, and political change within the framework of peace and sustainability. There are over 500 events planned worldwide, including: • a gathering of over 500 poets of the World Bangla Literature Council in Siranji, Bangladesh; • 100 Thousand Mimes performances in Cairo, Egypt; • over 25 events in Mexico,with flash mobs, movie screenings, slams, and installations; • a three-day festival at 100 Thousand Poets for Change headquarters in Santa Rosa, with a heavy metal blowout, a March for Peace and Sustainability with Aztec dancers, marching bands, and Brazilian drummers, and a poetry marathon with over 100 poets.

Events are also scheduled in Greece, India, Pakistan, China, France, Tunisia, Guatemala, Morocco, Turkey, Sudan, Lithuania, Italy, and 100 other countries.

All are welcome to attend or organize a 100 Thousand Poets, Musicians, Artists, Photographers, and/or Mimes event. Those who want to get involved may visit www.100tpc.org to find an event near them or sign up to organize an event in their area.

Stanford University recognizes 100 Thousand Poets for Change as an historical event, the largest poetry reading in history, and preserves documentation of its readings and other events in that university's archives.

About 100 Thousand Poets for Change Co-Founder Michael Rothenberg (walterblue@bigbridge.org) is a widely known poet, editor of the online literary magazine Bigbridge.org, and an environmental activist based in Northern California. Co-Founder Terri Carrion is a poet, translator, photographer, and editor and visual designer for BigBridge.org.
100 Thousand Poets for Change P.O. Box 870 Guerneville, CA 95446 Phone: (305) 753-4569 www.100TPC.org

Friday, July 26, 2013

Harriet features Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry

Thanks to the Poetry Foundation for featuring Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry on Harriet, the blog! Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry at the Poetry Foundation! 

A New Anthology of 21st-Century Russian Poetry!

By Harriet Staff Samuel-Gareginyan
From Russia: Beyond the Headlines, a great review of the new anthology Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry, which is collected on the website Big Bridge and edited by Larissa Shmailo. Contributors include Philip Nikolayev, Vladimir Gandelsman, Katia Kapovich, Polina Barskova, Marina Boroditskaya, Dmitry Kuzmin, Maxim Amelin, Elena Fanailova, Mikhail Aizenberg, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Alexander Ulanov, Ruslan Komadey, Vita Korneva, Alexander Stessin, Andrei Sen-Senkov, Sergey Stratanovsky, Alexei Tsvetkov, Maria Rybakova, Maria Stepanova, Alexandr Skidan, Bakhyt Kenjeev, Nariste Alieva, Felix Chechik, Vadim Mesyats, and many more. Phoebe Taplin writes of the anthology:
New York-based Shmailo first approached the webzine “Big Bridge” in June 2012 “with the idea of an ultra-contemporary anthology of Russian poetry.” The resulting collection is reaching international audiences and there are plans to extend into a more comprehensive, bilingual print edition.
The anthology celebrates the arts of translation as well as poetry. Shmailo told RBTH: “the poem needed to be beautiful in English as well as a good reflection of the original Russian.” She detects a new excitement about Russian writing in the United States and believes “we are all falling in love with literary Russia all over again.”
Shmailo has included “émigré voices with still-strong Russian roots,” among them influential figures like Bakhyt Kenjeev. One of his poems uses the timeless imagery of the wanderer: “argonaut” or “nomad,” sailing to shore, or taking to the road. Another of Kenjeev’s bittersweet elegies looks back at the icons of a Soviet youth (“Sputnik, Laika,/ then Gagarin…”) and forward to an alien future.
Moscow and New York are home to many of the anthology’s poets and translators, but there is a rich geographical diversity too, including writers from Israel, Kyrgyzstan or Colorado. The poems are recent, written since the year 2000, but the range of writers’ ages is remarkable.
Some poets’ lives span the eras, like Arkadii Dragomoschenko who died last year, or 77-year-old Natalya Gorbanevskaya, a veteran Soviet dissident, one of eight courageous protestors in the 1968 “Red Square Demonstration.” Others represent a new generation, like Ruslan Komadey, born in 1990 in Kamchatka, whose thoughtful poetry reflects the slow “cycles of the earth.”
“I wanted to include both established and emerging voices in a wide range of styles,” said Shmailo. There are formal experiments, free or fragmented verse, and poetic prose. But the themes echo through the centuries: Love, death, pain and religion, the inner world of dreams, the external realities of new homes, or native lands, and the tensions of living between the two.
[. . .]
Shmailo writes in her preface: “what Russians from Rurik to post-post perestroika have always done … is wrestle with the prokliatye voprosy, the “accursed questions”…” Big, abstract themes may underlie them, but the subtlest poems focus on barely visible details.
In one of Mikhail Aizenberg’s poems, translated by James Kates, “… a tiny moth has come awake,/ and flies like a negligible feather/ reminding me of something about you.” Alexei Tsetkov’s “ashes” has this shining glimpse of human delusion: “so we keep walking in the tall grass / where cats are chasing butterflies / and leap catching with their paws / only the empty bright air.”

Spectacular review in Russia Beyond the Headlines for new anthology

Dear Friends:

Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry has received  a spectacular review in Russia Beyond the Headlines! 

Please read and enjoy. Below is the full text of the review.




The anthology celebrates the arts of translation as well as poetry. Pictured: Dmitry Vodennikov. Source: Olga Salij / PhotoXpress.ru
Poetry is not well represented in the global view of Russian literature, in part because linguistic nuances make poems harder to translate than a story or a novel. New York-based Larissa Shmailo, editor of a groundbreaking anthology, hopes to change all that. “Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry” tantalizes English-speaking readers with selected poems from fifty writers.
Russia’s literary heritage continues to inspire today’s writers. There is an ongoing tradition of poems about other poets. Where once Akhmatova dedicated her verses to Blok (and vice versa), now Elena Fanailova writes about Gogol and Irina Mashinski mourns the suicide of Boris Ryzhy, a young poet from Yekaterinburg.
In her verses “In Nabokov’s Memory,” Katia Kapovich pays tribute to those, like Nabokov, who: “… never settled down to sink his roots/ in any fathermotherland.” Maxim Amelin, winner of this year’s Solzhenitsyn award, celebrates a range of cultures in his rich, allusive work: “If we wipe our memory clean / of its lingering garbage,/ what then will ever remain?”
Fusions and borrowings are everywhere. Polina Barskova, whose latest translated collection (“The Zoo in Winter”) had a series of poems with epigraphs from Hamlet, also favors classical references: “filching Orpheus or fibbing Odysseus.” Catherine Ciepiela’s translations of Barskova are a sneak preview of “Relocations,” an anthology of poetry by women due out from Zephyr Press next month.
Ruth Fainlight’s pitch-perfect version of Maria Boroditskaya’s poem to Cordelia, playfully subverts gender and genre. She tells the daughter of Shakespeare’s King Lear to reject her tragic destiny: “Like a puppy,/ Pull him by the leg of his pants with your teeth/ Into the game, into comedy!”
Emigrés and wanderers
New York-based Shmailo first approached the webzine “Big Bridge” in June 2012 “with the idea of an ultra-contemporary anthology of Russian poetry.” The resulting collection is reaching international audiences and there are plans to extend into a more comprehensive, bilingual print edition.
The anthology celebrates the arts of translation as well as poetry. Shmailo told RBTH: “the poem needed to be beautiful in English as well as a good reflection of the original Russian.” She detects a new excitement about Russian writing in the United States and believes “we are all falling in love with literary Russia all over again.”
Shmailo has included “émigré voices with still-strong Russian roots,” among them influential figures like Bakhyt Kenjeev. One of his poems uses the timeless imagery of the wanderer:  “argonaut” or “nomad,” sailing to shore, or taking to the road. Another of Kenjeev’s bittersweet elegies looks back at the icons of a Soviet youth (“Sputnik, Laika,/ then Gagarin…”) and forward to an alien future.
Moscow and New York are home to many of the anthology’s poets and translators, but there is a rich geographical diversity too, including writers from Israel, Kyrgyzstan or Colorado. The poems are recent, written since the year 2000, but the range of writers’ ages is remarkable.
Some poets’ lives span the eras, like Arkadii Dragomoschenko who died last year, or 77-year-old Natalya Gorbanevskaya, a veteran Soviet dissident, one of eight courageous protestors in the 1968 “Red Square Demonstration.” Others represent a new generation, like Ruslan Komadey, born in 1990 in Kamchatka, whose thoughtful poetry reflects the slow “cycles of the earth.”
“I wanted to include both established and emerging voices in a wide range of styles,” said Shmailo. There are formal experiments, free or fragmented verse, and poetic prose. But the themes echo through the centuries: Love, death, pain and religion, the inner world of dreams, the external realities of new homes, or native lands, and the tensions of living between the two.
Big themes; recurring dreams 
Shmailo writes in her preface: “what Russians from Rurik to post-post perestroika have always done … is wrestle with the prokliatye voprosy, the "accursed questions"…” Big, abstract themes may underlie them, but the subtlest poems focus on barely visible details.
In one of Mikhail Aizenberg’s poems, translated by James Kates, “… a tiny moth has come awake,/ and flies like a negligible feather/ reminding me of something about you.” Alexei Tsetkov’s “ashes” has this shining glimpse of human delusion: “so we keep walking in the tall grass / where cats are chasing butterflies  / and leap catching with their paws / only the empty bright air.”
Maria Rybakova’s verse-novel “Gnedich” builds on the work of its namesake poet, one-eyed, dreamy Nikolai Gnedich and his translation of the “The Iliad.” For Rybakova, like Lermontov and others, dreams are a recurring motif, revealing an interior world:
“… at night,/ when the bed was rocking/ and calling itself/ in the false language of dreams,/ 'a boat.'” Marina Boroditskaya, in Sasha Dugdale’s powerful translation, imagines herself judged by the “heavenly medical board” and found wanting: “You will wake as a woman again/ With winter upon you.”
The selected poems are brief, sweet tasters from a Russian feast; in its current form the anthology is tantalizing and uneven. It might have been useful to list the poets in alphabetical order and to provide a fuller introduction that would lead new readers into the text. A slight sense of exclusivity is reinforced by Eugene Ostashevsky’s clever version of Igor Belov’s poem about translation, where knowledge of the original (provided in Russian) is essential to get “the inside joke.”
But these are quibbles and Ostashevsky’s heroic puns (“Hector/ hectors. Menelaus/lays many”) are worth it. Poetry has often been poorly translated, Shmailo explained, because the translator lacked the poet's ear. Gathering together “many superb poets fully bilingual in Russian and English who are also experienced translators,” Shmailo and her team have produced something unusual and fascinating: a contemporary Russian poetry anthology translated by poets.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Interview in Coldfront Magazine

Thanks to Coldfront Magazine for this great interview with me about The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses and our upcoming appearance at the New York City Poetry Festival. Representing the Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses this Sunday will be Patricia Spears Jones, Sharon Mesmer, Ron Kolm, Michael T. Young, and yours truly!

Interview with Larissa

Poetry Festival Preview: The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses

The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses
Day: Sunday
Stage: The Algonquin
Time: 1:40 PM
Interview with curator Larissa Shmailo

1. Tell us a little bit about your organization.
Founded in 1993,The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses are a loose (sic) organization of men, women, and others who bring their wit and wisdom to the poetic arts in their hometown of NYC. Together and individually, the Feminist Poets have performed on behalf of Girls Write Now, the Bread and Life Soup Kitchen, 100,000 Poets for Change, The New York City Poetry Calendar, Share Our Strength/American Express, Poets in Need, and just for the hell of having a good literary time.
2. Who is reading in your slot at the Festival and why?
Sharon Mesmer, because she has a book entitled Annoying Diabetic Bitch and is the queen of flarf; Patricia Spears Jones, because she gives us the credibility of her poetic stature; Ron Kolm, because the Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses love the Unbearables (a drinking group with a writing problem) which Ron founded; Michael T. Young because his poetry is beautiful (read and listen!); and Larissa Shmailo, because I founded the organization (my poetry is available on the Web and at the links below).
.
3. Who else are you looking forward to seeing at the Festival?
The Poetry Brothel, Cornelius Eady, Dorothea Lasky, Todd Colby, Miguel Algarin, and absolutely nothing can happen without Bob Holman!
4. Did you attend the festival last year? If so, what was your favorite thing about it?
Yes, reading with Susan Scutti and Yuriy Tarnawsky was a blast.
5. Why is live poetry important?
It doesn’t matter whether it is important or not: I can’t live without hearing poetry read by living poets.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry

Dear Friends:

I am proud to share this new online anthology of contemporary Russian poetry, Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry, which appears in the new Big Bridge edited by the visionary Michael Rothenberg.

The anthology features the work of 50 brilliant Russian poets translated by equally gifted poets, including Boris Dralyuk,Stephanie Sandler, Alex Cigale, Philip Nikolayev, Matvei Yankelevich, Elena Fainailova, Dmitry Kuzmin, Katia Kapovich, Phil Metres, Maria Khotimsky, Elena Dimov, Maxim Amelin, Maria Stepanova, James Kates, Polina Barskova, Eugene Ostashevsky, Oleg Dozmorov, Alexander Ulanov, Sergei Gandlevsky, Irina Maximova, Alexander Skidan,Tatiana Shcherbina, Vladimir Gandelsman, Olga Zilberbourg, Maria Rybkova, Irina Mashinski, Alexei Tsvetkov, and many more.

http://bigbridge.org/BB17/poetry/twentyfirstcenturyrussianpoetry/twenty-first-century-russian-poetry-contents.html

Please welcome your poetic brothers and sisters from the RF!

Kind regards,
Larissa Shmailo
editor, Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Work in Penguin anthology Words for the Wedding

I'm delighted that my poems "Vow" and "Personal" appear in the mass-market Penguin anthology Words for the Wedding.  It is my first appearance in a multimillion-selling book, and I am termed a "contemporary American poet" - which is all I have ever wanted to be.

This book is a great gift for engaged couples and members of their weddings who want inspiration in selecting vows and toasts.

http://books.google.com/books?id=qZ6I-pcCbr0C&pg=PT62&dq=words+for+the+wedding+shmailo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8WimUdevL6_-4APs_oCwCg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The Next Big Thing


"The Next Big Thing” is an international game in which writers share the news of their latest project. Pat Fahrenfort tagged me recently.


What is your working title of your new poetry collection?
#specialcharacters. The title refers to the hashtags and ampersands of the experimental work in the collection as well as to the personae, such as Mary Magdalene, a dominatrix, a few vociferous madwomen, and a writer manquée named Ritar, that populate the work.
 
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I cut my teeth in poetry in spoken word. I have several narrative and performance poems from that period in this collection. More recently, I have been exploring so-called experimental forms, including vispo, flash, and language poetry. I wondered how I could include these disparate works in one book, and came up with the idea of a mixed genre manuscript with a story at the end that married all the forms. So I included my story in single sentences, “Mirror.”
 
What genre does your book fall under?
It’s all poetry, but from a wide range of poetics. “Mirror” is a send-up of many prose and poetic forms, even as it creates a new one. For example, I do the exposition in footnotes and use the names of real living people (who might sue me if they find out) in my protagonist’s memoirs. And Ritar (my heroine’s name) shares her memoirs more than a little with me.
 
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Kathleen Turner for Mary Magdalene and the dominatrix. Johnny Depp as Ritar (he could do a female part.)

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
New form, old traum(ata).
 
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 
The book is seeking a good home with a press with a brilliant list and a sense of humor and adventure–I will change the names of the villains to avoid lawsuit upon request.
 
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Some of the work in the book is over ten years old, but most has been written in the past few years.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Since I have hit almost all genres in this book, I can only say that the genre-mixing of Ulysses was a huge influence.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Joyce, as above; Nabokov; my friends at the Facebook Otherstream writing group; Carol Novack with her genre-defying pieces.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
I rank out the Paris Review in one poem; Mary Magdalene is a biker chick in another. This book received an honorable mention in the Coconut Poetry Elizabeth P. Braddock Prize.

And now the blog rolls on to Annie Pluto, poet and professor of literature and drama at Lesley University.


Friday, March 22, 2013

Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry in Translation

Please join us on Thursday, April 11, 6:00 pm, at New York City's Cornelia Street Cafe for a special sampling from the forthcoming Big Bridge Magazine anthology, "Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry," edited by Larissa Shmailo

Poets and Translators:
Philip Nikolayev, Katia Kapovich, Irina Mashinski, Dana Golin, Alexander Cigale, Andrey Gritsman, Larissa Shmailo

Host:
Andrey Gritsman



See all the event details here:
http://www.facebook.com/events/579275735425672/

Do skorogo!


Monday, March 11, 2013

Poetry Broadside to Commemorate AWP

The beautiful broadside created by Zachary Bos of Pen & Anvil Press, composed of lines from poems by Philip Nikolayev, Katia Kapovich, Therese Svoboda, Bill Yarrow, Annie Pluto, Ben Mazer, and yours truly, to commemorate our AWP reading at Lesley University.

Saturday, March 02, 2013

SUNDAY, MARCH 10: UNLIKELY HATTERS II


MadHat Presents and Unlikely Stories: Episode IV  are teaming up to bring you a literary evening worth setting your clock for.

New Yorkers Alexander Cigale, Steve Dalachinsky, Dana Golin, Susan Lewis, Yuko Otomo and Larissa Shmailo will be there, bringing you visions global and interdimensional. And Jonathan Penton will be on hand from Louisiana, drinking your oil spills and stealing your toothpaste.

Our writers will be accompanied by Leon Dewan of Dewanatron, inventor of the Swarmatron, the crazed electronic genius described at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/01/24/110124ta_talk_paumgarten .

The whole thing goes down at 6:30 pm at le poisson rogue, 158 Bleeker St., New York, in the gallery. Come recover from the AWP Conference with us, or just gloat that you had more sense than to go!

You can learn more about the Unlikely series at http://www.unlikelystories.org/ and the MadHat family at http://www.madhatarts.com/ .



158 Bleecker Street, New York, New York 10012
Sun March 10 6:30 pm

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

New Web site: www.larissashmailo.com

Dear Friends:

Please visit my new Web site at www.larissashmailo.com for a complete description of my editorial, writing, translation, and social media services. Also check the "Literary Services" page for information on poetry manuscript review and submission services. (Oh, you know it's time to get published!)

Embrazos,
Larissa

Monday, February 25, 2013

Persian Version of "Rules of Reflection" for John Ashbery

I am thrilled that Iranian poet Rahi (Mohammad Mostaghimi) has translated my poem, "The Rules of Reflection" for John Ashbery into Persian!

http://rahiyane.blogspot.com/2013/02/blog-post_25.html#more

               Rules of Reflection

                         for John Ashbery
  

When light is reflected by convex mirrors,
a virtual image is formed.

                                <  .  >

Some of you will have difficulty
understanding how
the image of an 
object can can be found from a single point.


Some other poems of mine  Rahi has translated into Persian include "Date," "Oscillation," "Dancing with the Devil," and "My First Hurricane."

Rahi, mamnoon!
 . با تشکر از شما

Sunday, February 24, 2013

MadHat / Pen & Anvil Reading at AWP




MadHat Presents Live and The Pen & Anvil Press are pleased to present:

Readings by Terese Svoboda, Ben Mazer,
Larissa Shmailo, Philip Nikolayev, Katia Kapovich, Sassan Tabatabai, Susan Lewis, Annie Pluto, Matthew Kelsey, Ellen Adair Glassie, and Thomas Simmons!

Featuring host Jonathan Penton reading works by Marc Vincenz and j/j hastain!



Join the merriment at the Facebook event page here: http://www.facebook.com/events/105031043005236/

Saturday, February 23, 2013

"I Stand on Holy Ground": Chant for My Lai, Exorcism, on Indiefeed Performance Poetry

The title track of my CD Exorcism, a found poem about the My Lai massacre, is up at Indiedeed Performance  Poetry:

http://indiefeedpp.libsyn.com/larissa-shmailo-exorcism-found-poem

You can buy the track or the CD or read reviews at CDBaby.com at:
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/shmailo2

or on Spotify, Rhapsody, iTunes, or Amazon.



Album Notes
\"In a sea of mimics, this poet is an original voice.\" ---Doug Holder, Ibbetson Street Press

\"Shmailo reads with so much intensity, intonation, energy, in velvety and sensual voice, that to not hear this would be a missed experience....Shmailo is intense. She can shock, she can tickle, she can entrance. Shmailo poetizes devils with the same skill as she weaves words around God and Magdalene. Her poetry is as lushly sensual as it is cutting to the bone. This is about love and pain, birth and rebirth, fields of magnolias, and surviving the Warsaw ghetto... The slap of shock is appropriate. This is not merely strong performance, it is also strong in substance.\"---Zinta Aistars, The Smoking Poet

\"Larissa Shmailo does not think small. On Exorcism, she is trying to do nothing less than exorcise the demons of human evil...While this is the overarching theme of the Exorcism (and it is, for the most part, a powerful and effective theme), it is not all that is going on on this CD. There are a number of individually powerful poems here, such as “The Gospel According to Magdalene,” “Bloom,” and “Abortion Hallucination.” They all fit, some tightly, some loosely, into the larger theme, but also stand well on their own.
---G. Murray Thomas, Poetix

\"The whole CD digs...bringing forth fiery, unorthodox, visceral imagery of the Devil and Magdalena, lovers and torturers and survivors. [Shmailo] crafts breath, rhythm, and rhyme, with a relaxed and dancerly demeanor and natural authority. Highly recommended.\" ---Anne Elliott, Ass Backwords

\"Exorcism, Larissa Shmailo\'s second poetry CD, displays the remarkable range and electrifying vitality that have won her admirers worldwide. Following fast on the release of The No-Net World, Larissa Shmailo returns to her deepest poetic origins, and from there, reveals an ascendancy that will mystify and astound.
Begin your Exorcism. Take hold of the promise in “Vow.” It’s yours. It asks you to join the “people who fought and won” in “Warsaw Ghetto,” where you’ll find your singing strength. The witty and defiant “Dancing with the Devil” leads you to learn “How to Meet and Dance with Your Death.” This fiery and original narrative is fit only for real explorers. Heed the admonitions to avert unnecessary demons, see the sweaty face of your own Reaper, and know \"after that, you will never fear him again, nor seek him.\" The hauntingly seductive puissance in “He follows her . . .” yields to a caboodle of ghosts surveying a ghostly city in Shmailo’s sparkling translation of “Dante” by Anna Ahkmatova.
As illusions of death wane, you will feel the pleasure and pain of “My First Hurricane.” Then get “Personal” with longing for knowledge of the beloved. Power returns in the gorgeous “The Gospel According to Magdalene,” a manifesto of might, whose structural elements are slyly subverted by sampling. Get under the tongue-in-cheek “Skin,” a grunge hymn, and emerge somewhere on “Catawissa Road,” where a skewering Penelope grudgingly meshes with a mad Odysseus. Overcome distaste for arid wastes when “Ayah” asks why a surplus of sand covers everything bland.
The still center is “Bhakti,” Shmailo’s homage to tenth-century mystic poet Mahadevi-Akka, who worshiped the \"Lord White as Jasmine,\" a destroyer of illusions who offers salvation repeatedly, from world to world. The savage art song, “Bloom” invokes Colette, Sand, and James Joyce and the lives of working women throughout the ages.
You may be well schooled by the “Rules of Reflection,” yet there are perils ahead. This is, after all, an exorcism. A demonic maternal phantasmagoria scolds in “At the Top of My Lungs,” twisting its enigmatic wreath of fears and death. But hold your tears—and your breath—for “Abortion Hallucination,” a lyric hell of loss and blackest light. Survive its strife. Let “New Life 2” bring you back to life. Shmailo’s imaginative and noetic variation on a theme by Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky sifts for signification in catastrophe, inspired by escaping the great trapping fire of war. For more to scale, there’s “Mapping” and, with urbane wit, finding “a use for all that doesn’t fit.”
Engage interior doom and sacred terrain in “Exorcism,” a syncretic chant, part found-poem, part puzzle, part indictment, and part prayer for social justice. If you want, you can fly full circle to “Vow.” Play that first track again, and you have drawn a perfect circle—that hardest of artist’s tasks—accomplished by this poet of intense musical, imaginative, and thematic variety. Possess yourself. Repeat as needed. You stand on holy ground.\" - Eric Yost

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