Victory over the Sun, Futurism, and Russian Silver Age Poetry in Translation 3/11

For immediate release
Press contacts:
Larissa Shmailo
Larissa_Shmailo@yahoo.com
212-712-9865
Andrey Gritsman
agritsman@msn.com

Victory over the Sun, Futurism, and Russian Silver Age Poetry in Translation
Intercultural Poetry hosted by Andrey Gritsman
Cornelia Street Café
29 Cornelia Street
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
6:00 pm – 7:45 pm
(212) 989-9319

New York City. Iconoclastic Russian theater and poetry of the Russian Silver age will be celebrated at the Cornelia Street Café March 11 with a star-studded program of new translations and original poetry. The event is part of the distinguished Intercultural Poetry series hosted by Andrey Gritsman, which introduces enthusiastic New York audiences to poetry from Russia, Eastern Europe, and many other cultures in stirring and fresh translation.
Noted poet David Lehman (Best American Poetry, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/david-lehman) opens the bill with translations of Futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and new original verse. Poet and translator Ilya Bernstein will then read from his new book of translations of the master Silver Age poet Osip Mandelstam (http://www.mgraphics-publishing.com/catalog/194022018/194022018.html)
The final event of the evening is a staged reading of part of Larissa Shmailo’s (www.larissashmailo.com) translation of the libretto of Victory over the Sun by Aleksei Kruchenych. Now in print from Červená Barva Press, www.thelostbookshelf.com/cervenabooks.html#Victory%20over%20the%20Sun) Shmailo’s translation was used for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s famous reconstruction of the opera in 1980. The libretto has been performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Smithsonian, and recently at the Garage Museum of Moscow for its retrospective of Russian performative art.
True to the “masculinity” of the original production, the Victory reading will have an all-male cast headed by renowned oral poet Bob Holman (Language Matters PBS series), series host Gritsman, National Endowment of the Art translation award winner Alex Cigale, and Compass Russian poetry translation winner Misha Semenov. The staged reading will be preceded by original poetry celebrating Russian Futurism by Gritsman, Cigale, Semenov, poet and translator and founder of the Compass Award Irina Mashinski http://www.stosvet.net/compass/ArsenyTarkovsky/Tarkovsky.html and Elizabeth Hodges, editor of the St. Petersburg Review (www.stpetersburgreview.com). Original music by Finnish composer Jukka-Pekka Kervinen (http://jukkapekkakervinen.blogspot.com based on Mikhail Matiushin's partially lost score for the original 1913 production will accompany the staged reading and poetry readings.