GENRIKH SAPGIR

'Genrikh Sapgir' (born in Biysk in 1928, died in Moscow in 1999) was a Russian poet and fiction writer.

Contents

Biography

A Samizdat Writer

During the Perestroyka Period

References

External links

Notes

Biography

He was born in Biysk of Jewish parents, and lived in Moscow from early childhood.

A Samizdat Writer

"Genrikh Sapgir is the most prominent figure of the writers that came to be associated with the now well-known Lianosovo group, which also included Vsevolod Nekrasov and Igor Kholin. These Moscow poets sought out new models and positions and exploited the possibilities of inserting common speech directly in their texts. Each of them had a Dostoyevskian eye for everyday Russian life, which made their work immediately accessible."^[1]

From 1959 he published his poetry for children. His other poems appeared only in émigré magazines, such as Continent and Strelets/The Archer.

During the Perestroyka Period

Since 1989 his poetry, short stories, plays and novels have been widely published in Russia. Three volumes of his Collected Poems appeared at the end of 1990s. He represented Russia at numerous international festivals of poetry, his work has been published in translation throughout the world. The English translations of his Psalms by Jim Kates of New Hampshire have been widely anthologised and warmly received. He has also been translated to English by Anatoly Kudryavitsky [1] and Artyom Kotenko & Anthony Weir[2] Andrew Bromfield published his translations of Sapgir's 'Very Short Stories'. Sapgir was the recipient of various awards including the Pushkin Prize for poetry. In 1999 he died of a heart attack in a Moscow trolley-bus on his way to the launch of the anthology of contemporary Russian poetry entitled "Poetry of Silence". Sapgir is regarded by many as the most important Russian poet of the second half of the 20th century.

References

★ Smith, A. 'Genrikh Sapgir: Klassik avangarda.' The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 83, Number 4, 1 October 2005, pp. 746-747(2)

★ Shrayer, M., Shrayer-Petrov, D. Генрих Сапгир: Классик авангарда. [Genrikh Sapgir: An avant-garde classic]. Dmitri Bulanin Publishing, St Petersburg, 2004.

External links

★ [3] Official website (in Russian)

★ [4] Psalms in English transl. by Jim Kates

★ [5] Five poems in English transl. by Anatoly Kudryavitsky

★ [6] Eight poems in English transl. by Artyom Kotenko & Anthony Weir

★ [7] Very short stories in English transl. by Andrew Bromfield

★ Ivan Karamazov's interview with Anatoly Kudryavitsky about Sapgir (in Russian)

Notes

★ Kudryavitsky, A. A Night in the Nabokov Hotel: 20 Contemporary Poets from Russia, Introduction, pp. 1-2.