R267. CANCELLED: What Kind of Times Are These? Immigrant Poets and the New Politics of Resistance

Status: Not Accepted

Room 214B, Henry B. González Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Thursday, March 5, 2020
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm

 

Adrienne Rich writes: “I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled / this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here.” This panel is about English language poets from Eastern Europe writing about the parallels between their homes and the US: nationalism, strongmen at the helm, and human rights abuses. We discuss new strategies of resistance, for more than one culture, and explore how poets co-opt the language of oppressors for their own power.


Outline & Supplemental Documents

Event Outline: Outline_~_What_Kind_of_Times_Are_These.docx

Participants

Moderator:

Olga Livshin is the author of A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman. Her work explores finding a place as a queer refugee. She is the co-organizer of From Across the Waters: Voices for Immigration.

Mariya Deykute is a teacher, writer, performing artist, and translator. Mariya received her MFA from UMass: Boston and has taught at UMass, the OLLI Institute, PEN New England, and Tohatchi High School. She currently teaches creative writing at Nazarbayev University in Kazakhstan.

Valzhyna Mort is the author of Factory of Tears and Collected Body. A recipient of several American and European awards and fellowships, including the Lannan Literary Fellowhsip, she teaches at Cornell University and writes in English and Belarusian. Her new book is forthcoming.

Anna Halberstadt is a poet and a translator, author of two poetry collections in English (Vilnius Diary and Green in a Landscape with Ashes) and two in Russian (Transit and Gloomy Sun), as well as translations of American poetry (Selected Selected by Eileen Myles and Nocturnal Fire by Edward Hirsch).

Larissa Shmailo is a poet, novelist, translator, and critic. Her latest hybrid novel is Sly Bang and latest experimental poetry collection is #specialcharacters. She is an anthologist of contemporary Russian poetry and the original English translator of the avant-garde opera, Victory over the Sun.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center