Friday, 9th September, 7:30pm
St.Paul’s Centre, Hills Rd, Cambridge
An evening with renowned Russian poet, master of irony, Igor Irteniev, and acclaimed Russian journalist, Alla Bossart, who writes analytical articles for “Novaya gazeta”.
Igor Irteniev is one of the best known and loved poets of contemporary Russia, the leading light in the school of “ironic poetry”. His works have already become real classics. Igor Irteniev was the first in modern-day Russia to have revived the genre of short satirical stories in verse (поэтический фельетон). He is also a columnist at “Gazeta.Ru”, has written song lyrics for a number of theatre productions, and some of you may fondly remember his character “Poet-Pravdorub” in Viktor Shenderovich’s sharp political satire “Itogo” (“Итого”) on Russian TV in the 1990s.
More about Igor Irteniev’s unique poetic style: “Igor Irteniev, a poet and a citizen”.
Alla Bossart is an acclaimed Russian journalist, essayist, writer, and poet. She has worked in the leading democratic periodicals linked to Russia’s perestroika. Alla Bossart was one of the founders of the only existing opposition newspaper in Moscow, “Novaya gazeta”. She is the author of five books of fiction; her novels and collections of stories have been nominated for the Russian Booker Prize and other prestigious awards. Alla Bossart is represented in the anthology “Russian Love Stories: from Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Bunin, to our times”.
In the course of the evening, Igor Irteniev recited his brilliantly funny, laconic and expressive poems, and Alla Bossart, who is generally better known as a journalist, pleasantly surprised the audience with her reflexive and original poems and short stories, from a recently published collection “Ravings of Love”. There was an opportunity to ask questions, talk informally to the authors in a warm, relaxed atmosphere, buy their books (in particular, the latest collection of Igor Irteniev’s verse, “On Marxist Lane”), and receive their autographs.
