This is a brief overview of the contents of the first issue of Poetry magazine, aimed primarily at those colleagues who are unable to read it in Russian. We are working on translations of our materials into English and Spanish, but the editorial team’s limited resources do not allow us to ensure simultaneous publication. To mitigate this inconvenience, we have prepared an overview that offers a brief introduction to each of the texts included in this issue and their authors.
The journal is dedicated to independent Russian-language poetry in the context of world literature. Conceived as early as February 2025, Poetry was originally intended to be published not only online but also in print. Unfortunately, following yet another (sudden but predictable) shift in the circumstances surrounding independent literature in Russia, the launch of the print magazine had to be postponed. At the moment, Poetry is available only in digital format.
The first issue of Poetry opens with collections of poems by contemporary Russian-language poets from various geographical locations (from the suburbs of Moscow to the outskirts of New York) and across different generations.
The poetry section begins with the collection “victory day” (день победы) by Dmitry Garichev, a poet and prose writer from Noginsk, winner of the oldest independent Andrei Bely Literary Prize, author of the novel Lakinsk Project (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2023), the poetry book Let Them Fly In (Пусть долетят) (Moscow: Gorgulya, 2024), and other books in which, as Denis Larionov writes, “shame and despair in a world created by betrayal turn out to be not so much feelings as properties of things and objects that blur the boundaries of meaning.” Next to it, we are publishing a selection of poems titled “With a Rough, but a Plan” (С примерным, но планом) by Lyubov Barkova, whose debut collection of poems Everyone Exists and Everything Exists (Все существуют и всё существует) is set to be published by the Moscow-based Gorgulya publishing house in 2026—Kornelija Ičin’s reflections on the specifics of her authorial language can be read in the essays section.
The section also features the collection “Why Do They Appear in Dreams” (Почему они снятся) by poet and literary scholar Valery Shubinsky, whose creative work began in the era of the Leningrad underground and continues in contemporary St. Petersburg. The author of numerous poetry collections and books dedicated to Russian poets, Shubinsky actively participates in the contemporary literary life of both of Russia's capitals as an author, researcher, and editor.
Ulyana Mor’s selection “Fleeting Message in Gothic Typeface” (Мимолётное послание готическим шрифтом) is one of the rare opportunities to see the poetic works of a young Moscow poet and artist. Mor is actively working in the genres of visual poetry, including blackout poetry and artist’s book: just a year ago, her book From the Series “500 Blackouts” (Из серии “500 блэкаутов”) was released in a limited edition, and as early as 2026, the exhibition The Woman Artist’s Book. Tattooing with Emptiness (Книга художницы. Татуировка пустотой) that she was involved with opened at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (featuring her work along with that of such important 20th-century Russian poetesses and artists as Ry Nikonova, Rimma Gerlovina, and Nina Iskrenko).
“Eleven Poems” (Одиннадцать стихотворений) by Grigory Starikovsky is a collection by a poet and translator who lives in the United States but is widely known in Russian literary circles. Starikovsky is one of the leading translators of ancient poetry: for instance, in 2025, the Nosorog publishing house released Homer’s Odyssey in his innovative translation. Starikovsky’s own poetry presents “a world based on the primacy of gaps, chasms, and voids—emptinesses and lacunae—in both the depicted and the depictor,” as Irina Mashinski writes in the foreword to his book The Bird of the Rift (Птица разрыва) (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2022).Nikita Tsvetkov’s selection “The Tree Weighs the Air” (Дерево взвешивает воздух) introduces the reader to a young St. Petersburg poet who made his debut in 2024 in the POETICA magazine and published a selection in the Literratura magazine in 2025. The section of authors’ publications concludes with a long poem by Shamshad Abdullaev (1957–2024), “Yozuvchi After Noon” (Ёзувчи после полудня). A poet, prose writer, essayist, and informal leader of the so-called Fergana Poetic School, who passed away in 2024, Abdullaev is one of the key figures in Russian-language poetry of the past half-century. In March 2026, the Nosorog publishing house released a collection of his poems titled The Obviousness of the South (Очевидность юга), which included both the published “Yozuvchi After Noon” (which became one of the author’s last works) and other poems from Abdullaev’s seven books printed during his lifetime.
In the prose section: “The Dream Was Music She Listened To” (Сон был музыкой, которую она слушала) by Katerina Savelyeva, a writer, essayist, and director from Moscow. Her writings have appeared in “zhurnal na kolenke,” “Piroskaf,” and other Russian periodicals, while her film works have been featured in both small and large independent film festivals and video art programs. In addition, we are publishing an excerpt from the book Cyclolion (Циклолион) by poet and prose writer Natalia Yavlyuhina, which Jaromir Hladik Press plans to publish in 2026. Yavlyuhina’s debut poetry collection, Sparkling Fatigue (Сверкающая усталость) (Moscow: Russky Gulliver) was published in 2022, and in 2024, the writer received the Andrei Bely Literary Prize for her book Ionites (Moscow: Gorgulya, 2023) and Cicadas of Cold (A Climate Observation Diary) (Цикады холода (Дневник наблюдений за климатом); Saint Petersburg: Jaromir Hladik Press, 2024) in the “Prose” category.
The essays and articles section opens with “Toward the Stones” (В сторону камней), an essay by writer and editor-in-chief of the Nosorog publishing house Katya Morozova, in which she focuses on several poetic objects “placed within the landscape” from the poems, essays, and quotations of Shamshad Abdullaev. Morozova’s own prose (her debut collection, Amalgam (Амальгама), 2023) resonates with Abdullaev’s Fergana texts due to its geographical distance from the center of Russian-language writing and its proximity to another cultural hub—Venice, where she lives and works. Dmitry Garichev’s essay “Without an Enemy, Alone with Oneself” (Без врага, наедине с собой) is devoted to the diaries of the Russian poet Olga Berggolts (1910–1975), which were published in their entirety and unabridged only in the early 2020s. This body of texts bears witness to a poetic worldview that persisted amid the realities of Soviet Leningrad—primarily during the 1930s, the war, and the 872-day siege, as well as the period of postwar censorship. An article by literary critic and translator David Dmitriev (published under a pseudonym) is devoted to the archives of poet, prose writer, and essayist Andrei Tavrov (1948–2023): one of the most important Russian-language authors of the recent past, who had a significant influence on the young generation of poets. Tavrov’s name is most often associated with the metarealist movement and is mentioned in the same breath as those of Alexei Parshchikov, Ivan Zhdanov, Alexandr Eremenko, and Vladimir Aristov. Work on the poet’s archives, which began after his death in 2023, is gradually bearing fruit (Tavrov’s novella Gymnasium Girl (Гимназистка) and his final poetry cycle, Angels of Constantine (Ангелы Константина), have already been published; in addition, the publication of a four-volume collection of poems, compiled by the author himself shortly before his death, is ongoing). The gradual systematization of archival materials has itself become a subject of research for Dmitriev, one of the specialists working with the archive.
The issue also features an article by Kornelija Ičin, a professor of philology at the University of Belgrade and a researcher of avant-garde art, on the poems of Lyubov Barkova and the book Everyone Exists and Everything Exists (Moscow: Gorgulya, 2026). Ičin examines Barkova’s work both through the lens of avant-garde experience and in the context of contemporary poetic experimentation. “Lyubov Barkova’s poetry abounds with experiments concerning the study of the Old Slavic language, syntactically possible connections between words, and the fragility of the word,” writes Ičin. An essay by the Belarusian poet and researcher Frosya Vedeneeva (published under a pseudonym) on the Belarusian poet and writer Larysa Hienijuš (1910–1983), whose work was shaped by the painful experience of her homeland’s fate while in émigré life in Czechoslovakia and under the yoke of an eight-year prison camp sentence after the war, is accompanied by Hienijuš's poems in the original and in Russian transcriptions by Liv Alekseeva. It should be noted that the publication of this article itself, also translated from Belarusian by Liv Alekseeva, is a sign of the deep and consistent interest in Belarusian literature and the desire for dialogue with it that are characteristic of many authors of the younger generations of contemporary Russophone poetry.
An article by gallery owner, art critic, and publisher Ildar Galeev on the OBERIU Museum, which opened in January 2025 in St. Petersburg, offers a perspective on this unconventional museum from an unconventional angle. The exhibition in the apartment that once belonged to the OBERIU poet Alexander Vvedensky (1904–1941) recreates the atmosphere of living rooms from the early 1930s and seems to contrast with the space of the Galeev Gallery, yet it engages the visitor’s perception no less carefully. “In its new guise, the museum is already ceasing to be a cherished luxury mausoleum or tomb with 3D visualizations of the stages of so-and-so’s great life journey, and, as it turns out, it no longer aspires to be such a thing,” writes Galeev.
An essay by poet and translator Irina Mashinski is dedicated to the Cardinal Points magazine: a New York-based publication focused on Russian-language poetry, whose final issue was published in 2019. The magazine’s co-founder and editor Irina Mashinski reflects on the project, which concluded in 2024, through the key stages of its existence—“between storms.”The section concludes with a transcript of the presentation of the Russian-language edition of Ray Armantrout’s book Partly (Отчасти; Moscow: SOYAPRESS, 2025), which took place in Moscow in the fall of 2025. The discussion was joined by Armantraut herself and the book’s translator, Dmitry Kuzmin, as well as Russian-language poets and publishers—Liza Kheresh, Vladimir Koshelev, and Valery Goryunov. As Kuzmin notes, “the key aspect of Armantraut’s poetry is that it bridges the gap between the traditions of the American mainstream (roughly speaking, psychological lyric poetry) and the tradition of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E school.”
The interviews section features a conversation with Valery Sazhin, a scholar of the Russian avant-garde who served as the editor of the collected works of Yakov Druskin (1902–1980), a philosopher closely associated with the OBERIU group. The two-volume set is being published by the Ad Marginem publishing house in collaboration with the OBERIU Museum. As of today, the first volume of the collected works has been published, and its release served as the occasion for this interview.
The translations section opens with the publication #mandelstamcelan (#мандельштамцелан)—reverse translations of Osip Mandelstam into Russian from Paul Celan’s German translations, performed by Igor Bulatovsky, a St. Petersburg poet and founder of the Jaromir Hladik Press publishing house. The selection is accompanied by a foreword by translator and literary project curator Misha Konovalenko, who describes the experiment as follows: “Bulatovsky’s retellings fill the gap that emerges between Celan’s poetry and Mandelstam’s poetry. But the poems of Mandelstam and Celan do not merge in them; rather, they cancel each other out, like sound signals in antiphase. That which is Mandelstamian and absent in Celan, Bulatovsky filters through that which is Celanian and absent in Mandelstam.” The publication of a book tracing Igor Bulatovsky’s translation work is scheduled for 2026. A selection of poems from the book Anuarí by Chilean poet Teresa Wilms Montt (1893–1921), translated by Natalia Meteleva, precedes the release of Montt’s first book in Russian. During her lifetime, Montt published five collections of poetry, printed in Buenos Aires and Madrid after the poet escaped from the Monastery of the Holy Blood, where she had been confined by her relatives. The book, which the Nosorog publishing house is preparing for publication in 2026, will include three collections by Teresa Vilms Montt—Sentimental Doubts (Inquietudes sentimentales, 1917), In the Stillness of Marble (En la quietud del mármol, 1918), and works partially published in the journal Anuarí (1918). The section also features eight poems from David Herbert Lawrence’s Birds, Beasts and Flowers, translated by Dmitry Manin. A classic of 20th-century English literature, Lawrence remained virtually unknown to Russian-speaking readers as a poet until now. His collection was written under the influence of his travels through Italy, Sicily, Ceylon, and other countries. By juxtaposing the conflicting images of a stagnant civilization and living nature, Lawrence constructs a third reality based on the contrast between social etiquette and primal forces. The poems by Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888–1970) from the book The Joy of Shipwrecks (Allegria di naufragi), translated by Petr Epifanov, are a continuation of the translator’s long-standing work with the poetry of Italian modernism. Epifanov’s translations have already included, among others, Dino Campana’s Orphic Songs (Moscow: Reka Vremen, 2019; original title: Canti Orfici) and Antonia Pozzi’s Words (St. Petersburg: Ivan Limbach Publishing House, 2013; original title: Parole). A collection by Giuseppe Ungaretti, a 20th-century classic and founder of the Hermeticism movement in Italian literature, is being prepared for publication by Nosorog publishing house in 2026. A selection of poems by the Serbian poet Saša Radojić, “Disagreements with the World”, translated by Mikhail Bordunovsky and Anna Vogel, may serve as a starting point for readers to discover contemporary Serbian authors. Sasha Radojčić is a Doctor of Philosophy, the author of twelve poetry collections as well as a number of theoretical works and essays, the recipient of numerous literary awards, and the editor of the anthology of new Serbian poetry Shadows and Their Objects (Сенке и њихови предмети, 2021). The section also features selections from two Costa Rican poets translated by Dmitry Kuzmin: “Cave Art” by Marvin Castillo Solís (1992–2025) and “Mexico, Almost a Return” by Ignacio Aru (1999–2025). Both of these young authors tragically passed away in 2025, having managed to publish two books of poetry each. Ignacio Aru gained recognition as a student when he won the Student Arts Festival and the Letra Joven Award in 2017, and subsequently published poems in magazines in Argentina, Bolivia, Spain, Colombia, and Mexico. In addition to his own work, which was recognized with awards from the Brunk Literary Contest (2013) and the Lisimaco Chavarria Literary Contest (2017), Marvin Castillo Solís curated literary projects and conducted extensive research as a poetry scholar. The translations section concludes with Miloš Crnjanski’s prose text “Apotheosis,” translated by Sofya Alempievich. In 2025, the Moscow publishing house SOYAPRESS released a collection of his poems, Lyrics of Ithaca (Лирике Итаке), with commentary by the poet himself, thereby reigniting the conversation about Crnjanski’s prose as well (Crnjanski’s books Migrations (Сеобе), A Novel of London (Роман о Лондону) and “The Journal of Čarnojević” (Дневник о Чарнојевиću) had previously been published in Russian).
The archive section opens with the article “Not in Life, but on Stage: Oleg Yuryev as a Playwright” by Valery Shubinsky, who, along with Yuryev (1959–2018), was a member of the literary group “Kamera khraneniya” (“Storage Room”). This material precedes the first publication of Oleg Yuryev’s play “Love for Three Oranges, or The Mysterious Disappearance of Carlo Gozzi” (Любовь к трём апельсинам, или Таинственное исчезновение Карло Гоцци, 1989). Yuryev is known to Russian-speaking readers primarily as one of the key poets of the Leningrad underground, yet his prose and dramatic legacy also deserve the closest attention. In 2024, his novel Vineta (Винета; Moscow: SOYAPRESS) was published, and as early as 2026, the Nosorog publishing house is preparing to release a collection of Yuryev’s plays, including previously unpublished works. The discussion of archival texts continues with Dmitry Kuzmin’s note on the collected works of Nina Iskrenko (1951–1995)—one of the most significant figures in uncensored Moscow poetry of the 1980s and the informal leader of the “Poeziya” (“Poetry”) club, a key association of Moscow poets of that time. Her work is fairly well known to Russian-speaking readers (largely thanks to Kuzmin’s own archival and publishing efforts), but many of Iskrenko’s poems remain unpublished, and the poet’s archive requires further processing. Immediately following Dmitry Kuzmin’s note is the publication of a book from an anthology of poems compiled by Iskrenko herself: the poetry book “For the Plain Truth” (Для чистой правды, 1983), the fifth “volume” of her collected poems, is published in accordance with a typewritten copy. The next publication returns to Leningrad literature: it is a selection of minimalist poems titled “The Cause of All Causes Is the Cause” by the poet and artist A. Nik (1945–2011), with commentary by the poet and literary scholar Petr Kazarnovsky. A. Nik (Nikolai Axelrod) emigrated to Prague in the early 1970s, where he published a samizdat journal in Czech and worked as an abstract graphic artist; today, in his homeland, he is known only within a narrow circle of specialists in the Leningrad underground. A collection of A. Nik’s poems is currently being prepared for publication, a joint project of two publishing houses—Moscow’s Nosorog and St. Petersburg’s Jaromir Hladik Press. The archival section of the anthology concludes with selections from two poets—Mikhail Skachkov (1896–1937) and Vladimir Sveshnikov (Kemetsky) (1902–1938)—with prefaces written by the St. Petersburg poet and scholar Kirill Shubin. These are poems by authors whose fates turned out to be tragically similar—emigration in the early 1920s, return to the Soviet Union in 1926, and execution in 1937–1938. Mikhail Skachkov’s poetics (the collection “Music of Motors” (Музыка моторов)) took shape in Prague, within the circle of Russian Futurists and Czech avant-gardists. This article presents both poems from the poetry book “Music of Motors” (1926) and the essays “On the Technique of Russian Verse” (1924, published in a translation by Kirill Shubin) and “The ‘Devetsil’ Association of Modern Culture in Prague” (Revoljucija i kul'tura, 1928), as well as Skachkov’s own translations of works by his Czech colleagues—for example, Konstantin Bibla and Jaroslav Seifert. Vladimir Sveshnikov (Kemetsky) (the collection “The Most Tender Minnesinger” (Нежнейший миннезингер)) was actively involved in the life of Parisian avant-garde groups and was a friend of the poet Boris Poplavsky, who is widely known today. The collection includes poems from the archives of the House of Russia Abroad, most of which have never been published before.
In the section on forthcoming publications: an article by Swedish literary critic and professor of aesthetics Sara Danius (1962–2019) on Bob Dylan from the book The Silk Cathedral (Sidenkatedralen), translated by Natalia Povalyayeva, which the St. Petersburg-based Ivan Limbach Publishing House plans to release in 2026. The book includes Danius’s essays on Marcel Proust, Bob Dylan, Svetlana Alexievich, Thomas Mann, and other famous writers, as well as transcripts of her radio appearances. In addition, this issue features poems by Andrea Zanzotto, Laura Pugno, and Vincenzo Ostuni from the anthology of contemporary Italian avant-garde poetry Poetry as Research (Стих как исследование), translated by Olga Sokolova, a specialist in linguopoetics, author of monographs on the language of the poetic avant-garde, and winner of the Elio Pallarani National Prize for translations from Italian. The book is scheduled for release by the Moscow publishing house Nosorog. “The authors continue and reinterpret the line of neo-avant-garde exploration, developing poetry as a form of linguistic experimentation. Their poetic practices operate on the border between norm and deviation, combining metalinguistic reflection with ecological, scientific, and philosophical discourses”, writes Olga Sokolova in the foreword to the anthology.
The “Surveys” section features reflections by young poets on Flagi (“Flags”), the literary magazine which was forced to cease publication in August 2025. The survey included both authors who had been involved with the periodical since its founding in 2020 and those who joined the magazine at the height of its activity and closer to its end. This material, without claiming to be exhaustive, is intended to open a conversation about the role of Flagi—a magazine that brought together a significant portion of young Russian-speaking poets—in contemporary Russian literature. A significant number of the poets who answered questions about Flagi publish under pseudonyms—primarily due to the grim situation currently surrounding independent literature in Russia.
The reviews section features three critical overviews of contemporary Russian-language book publishing. A selection of reviews by poet and essayist Alina Dadaeva, “Overcoming Limits” (Преодолевая пределы) is dedicated to Shamshad Abdullaev’s essay collection List (Перечень; Moscow: Nosorog, 2023), Alexei Porvin’s poetry book Song of the Brothers (Песня о братьях; Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2024), and Andrei Tavrov’s poetry collection Angels of Constantine (Ангелы Константина; Moscow: Knigi AT, 2024). A collection of reviews by Maxim Petrovich (published under a pseudonym), “Gentle Distortion” (Бережный дисторшн) discusses poetry collections published in 2025—these include Humble Swallows (Смиренные ласточки) by Sofya Dubrovskaya and Attic with Windows Facing East (Мансарда с окнами на восток) by Evgenia Lieberman from Neomenia Publishing, as well as this is it by Vlada Baronets (это это; Moscow; St. Petersburg: T8 Izdatel'skie Tehnologii/Palmira). In a selection of reviews by Marusya Sechina (published under a pseudonym), “The Playing Poet” (Поэт играющий), the focus is on Anastasia Elizarieva’s collection The Floor Is Not Lava (Пол это не лава; Ozolnieki: Literature Without Borders, 2025), Danya Danilchenko’s collection Moscow Hide-and-Seek (Московские прятки; Moscow:Zhurnal na kolenke, 2026), and Yegor Zernov’s book of poems Whoever Didn’t Hide It’s Not My Fault (Кто не спрятался я не виноват; St. Petersburg: Porjadok slov, 2024).