Unlike many of her contemporaries, Anzhelina Polonskaya did not receive
a classic Russian literary education, so her work is considerably more
idiosyncratic and less anchored in tradition. This book, her first
collection in English translation since 2005, includes her cycle Kursk,
an oratorio requiem with music by David Chisolm that will be performed
across Australia and the United States.
Anzhelina Polonskaya was born in Malakhovka, a small town near
Moscow, Russia. She began to write poems seriously at the age of
eighteen. Between 1995 and 1997 she lived in Latin America, working as a
professional ice dancer. Her first book of verse Svetoch Moi Nebesny
(My Heavenly Torch) appeared in 1993. Eventually deciding to leave ice
skating, and to devote herself full-time to literature, Polonskaya
consistently has been one of the freshest voices writing on both the
Russian and world stage.
Andrew Wachtel is the president of the American University of
Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Previously he was dean of The
Graduate School and director of the Roberta Buffett Center for
International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University. A
fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of numerous publications,
he is also a translator from Russian, Bosnian/Croation/Serbian, and
Slovene. He translated Anzhelina Polonskaya's previous collection, A
Voice (Northwestern University Press, 1995).
