The Slavic Literature Pod

• I Live I See by Vsevolod Nekrasov (w/ trans. Bela Shayevich and Dr. Ainsley Morse)

  Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives into the poetry of Vsevolod Nekrasov, joined by Bela Shayevich and Ainsley Morse who collected and translated works spanning much of his life in I Live I See: Selected Poems.Born in the USSR in 1934 and writing—mostly unofficially—through the end of his life in 2009 now in the Russian Federation, Vsevolod Nekrasov’s work is largely minimalist and deploys repetition like a musical motif. Some works span pages, while others are no more than a word reflecting itself. His work demands to be read aloud, to a crowd or even just one person. Ainsley Morse is an associate professor in UC San Diego’s department of literature. She’s a scholar of 20th and 21st century literature and culture of the post-war Soviet period, particularly unofficial or “underground” poetry, as well as the avant-garde, children's literature and contemporary poetry. She also translates from Russian, Ukrainian, and Bosnian-Serbian-Croatian. Bela Shayevich is a Soviet American writer and translator. She is best known for her translation of 2015 Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexi-ye-vich’s Secondhand Time, for which she was awarded the TA First Translation Prize. She has also translated Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We. Her writing has appeared in n+1, Jewish Currents, and Harper’s Magazine. She teaches in the Department of Translation at the University of Iowa. Major themes: Repetition, Making words mean something, visual poetry1:36:40 - Elena Kostyuchenko’s I Love Russia 1:37:10 - Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, The Art of Fiction No. 2671:39:40 - Goat Song by Konstantin VaginovThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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• Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov (w/ the author himself)

  Show Notes:This week, Cameron ascends into the towering heights of imperial politics in Yaroslav Barsukov’s Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory by Yaroslav Barsukov. The novel follows Shea Ashcroft, an imperial minister whose refusal to gas protesting citizenry has earned him a reassignment to a border region to oversee a fantastical military project. With no one truly on his side and managing strange technologies, Ashcrofts finds himself increasingly out of his depth.Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory includes and expands on Barsukov’s earlier novella Tower of Mud and Straw. It’s been nominated for a Nebula Award and received a Kirkus Reviews star.Joining Cameron to talk about the novel is Yaroslav himself. Born and raised in Moscow and now living in Austria for quite some time, Yaroslav’s background is in physics and software engineering. His writing career stems from game design, in a manner of speaking. He took up his pen around 2014 after quite enjoying the work of translating a game’s mythology for a pitchMajor themes: Suspicions of war, alien technologies, memory10:18 - Barsukov’s interview with the podcast “From the Lighthouse”26:54 - First correction I’ve had to issue in a while — I misremembered the name of the film, which is actually Protozanov’s “Aelita,” not “Anta Odeli Uta,” which is a phrase in the film. The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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• Hadji Murat by Leo Tolstoy (w/ Dr. Tatyana Gershkovich)

  Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives back into the work of Leo Tolstoy to talk about one of his later works, Hadji Murat. He’s joined by podcast returnee Dr. Tatyana Gershkovich, whose book Art in Doubt analyzes Tolstoy and Vladimir Nakokov’s approaches to skepticism, to talk about the work, Tolstoy’s work What is Art?, and discuss how his approaches to “true” and “untrue” art affect the novel. Gershkovich is the William S. Dietrich II Associate Professor of Russian Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the author of Art in Doubt: Tolstoy, Nabokov, and the Problem of Other Minds, published by Northwestern University Press. She’s also written essays published in PMLA, the Slavic and Eastern European Journal, the Journal of the History of Ideas, the Paris Review, and more.Major themes: True and untrue art, aesthetic responsiveness, Perceptions of warfare01:11 - Check out our episode on Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata with Dr. Tatyana Gershkovich.01:25 - Art in Doubt: Tolstoy, Nabokov, and the Problem of Other Minds by Dr. Tatyana Gershkovich58:35 - Silhouettes of Russian Writers: Literary and Philosophical Essays by Yuli AikhenvaldThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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• To Hell with Poets by Baqytgul Sarmekova (w/ translator Mirgul Kali)

  Pick up a copy of To Hell with Poets from the Tilted Axis Press website. Show Notes:This week, Cameron revisits Baqytgul Sarmekova’s To Hell With Poets with the help of the collection’s translator, Mirgul Kali. Together, they’ll dive back into how Sarmekova explores both Kazakh society and more universal themes through violence, disappointment and hope. Plus, learn a little more about Sarmekova herself as well as some of the peculiarities of translating from Kazakh into English. Mirgul Kali is a literary translator working from Kazakh language. Her translations of short stories by classic and contemporary Kazakh writers have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Electric Literature, The Massachusetts Review, Gulf Coast, Words Without Borders, and other publications. A graduate of MFA program in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, she received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant and a PEN Translates award for her translation of Baqytgul Sarmekova’s To Hell with Poets, a short story collection published by Tilted Axis Press in March 2024.01:03:49 - Sins of the Mother: Unsettling Matrilineal Inheritance in East Europe, Central Asia, and the CaucasusMajor themes: Kazakh cultural context, thematic universality, blonde dyed Lady HopeThe music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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• I Burned at the Feast by Arseny Tarkovsky (w/ translators Philip J. Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev)

  Buy a copy of I Burned at the Feast here.Show Notes:This week, Cameron dives into the collection I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky. You have almost certainly heard of virtuosic filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, but his father might be less familiar to you. Yet, you may still have heard his work — Tarkovsky the younger includes recordings of Arseny reading his own poetry in Mirror and Stalker. To get into the nitty-gritty of Arseny Tarkovsky’s ranging poetry about life, death, WWII, family, and his contemporaries, Cameron’s joined by Philip J. Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev, who collected and translated the poems within. Philip J. Metres is a poet, scholar, translator, essayist, and peacebuilder. He is the author of twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge, Shrapnel Maps, The Sound of Listening, and Sand Opera. His work has garnered fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Watson Foundation. He has been awarded the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Hunt Prize. Philip has been called “one of the essential poets of our time,” whose work is “beautiful, powerful, magnetically original.” He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He is also Core Faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts.  Dmitri Psurtsev is a Russian poet and translator of British and American prose-writers and poets. He has written five books of poetry — Ex Roma Tertia, Tengiz Notebook, Between, Tired Happiness, and Murka and Other Poems — and translated numerous books from English. Dimitri teaches translation at Moscow State Linguistic University.Major themes: Sort-of immortality, Evolving conceptions of death, Competitive poets01:31:53 - Check out Dimitri’s most recent work here (poetry in Russian) The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube. Our links: Website | ⁠Discord⁠ Socials: Instagram⁠ | BlueSky | Twitter⁠ | FacebookQuestions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

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