Richard McKane

To mark the 69th birthday of Richard McKane – an outstanding poet, translator and connoisseur of Russian poetry – we invite all those who knew Richard and his works and appreciate Russian poetry, to join us at this commemorative evening.

The programme will include:

– screening of the documentary film ‘Gumilyov in London’ where Richard is featured reading his English translation of Nikolay Gumilyov’s works.

– poetry by Anna Akhmatova, Leonid Aranzon, Osip Mandelshtam, Boris Pasternak,  Boris Poplavsky, Arseny Tarkovsky, and its English translation by Richard McKane will be recited by Lydia Grigoryeva, Kitty Hunter Blair (Stidworthy) and others.

– memories and informal contributions

The evening will be held in Russian and English languages and followed by a wine reception.

This year marks 130 birthday anniversary of Nikolay Gumilyov, who was executed by bolsheviks in 1921 (at the age of 36) for the false allegation of participation in monarchist conspiracy and acquitted in 1992. He was one of the most appreciated poets by Richard McKane, who translated his works into English. The film ‘Gumilyov in London’ (29 min) was produced by Russian Television in 1995. It focuses on a number of short visits of the Russian poet to London and features selected poetry readings in Russian and English. The film is narrated by Lidia Grigoryeva – a poet, essayist and photo-artist, who resides between London and Moscow. She is the author of several books and publications, including ‘Eternal Theme’ (2013) , ‘Poetry of Dreams’ (2015), ‘Poetry for Reading in the Subway’ (2016) and a winner of a number of awards and literary prizes.

Kitty Hunter Blair (Stidworthy) taught Russian at every level from small children to the Cambridge Tripos.   She has been involved with Pushkin House for well over sixty years, and in late Soviet times was E.Anglia representative of the GB-USSR (GB-Russia) Association.  Her translations include plays for the RSC and the BBC,  and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Sculpting in Time and Diaries;  her book Artistic Kinship between Arsenii and Andrei Tarkovsky was published by Tate Publishing in 2014 and includes translations of 150 of Arsenii Tarkovsky’s poems.

https://www.camruss.com/en/obituary-richard-mckane/