TATIANA SHCHERBINA and local translator poet SASHA DUGDALE
present the new translation from Bloodaxe

THURS MARCH 11 8pm
Open House pub 146 Springfield Road Brighton
£6/£3 Tickets 01273 242850 or on the door

Tatiana Shcherbina has been described as 'one of the most significant figures in contemporary Russian poetry' (Kommersant'). In her recent work the elegant and ironic narrator meditates on love, disappointment and loss against the backdrop of Russia's social collapse. Whilst her themes are timeless, Shcherbina's settings are distinctly contemporary. She writes about sitting at a computer gazing into the Microsoft Windows; her poems are full of supermarkets, printing cartridges, TV, the environment; she considers applying make-up, drinking alone, falling asleep to the sounds of films in the next room.

Tatiana Shcherbina is one of a generation of Russians who are able to travel frequently in Europe. She has lived in France - and sometimes writes in French - and her Russian poetry is filled with an awareness of other 'European' culture. She has even been criticised for a supposedly anti-Russian stance, yet she understands absolutely what is happening in Russia and is in no way an outsider. Hers is also the stance of a woman challenging Russia's patriarchal and chauvinist society. However, Tatiana Shcherbina's poetry is not primarily political, but literary, and she shows great versatility in different forms and genres. Her playfully meditative essays form the perfect counterpoint to her sophisticated and self-aware poetry.

Tatiana Shcherbina was born in Moscow in 1954. Before 1999 she worked on Radio Liberty and four of her collections were published in samizdat. Since 1999 she has published six volumes of poetry and prose in Russia and two poetry collections in French, her adopted mother tongue. She has been a journalist and a reviewer for several Russian newspapers. In 2002 she took part in the Poetry International at London's Royal Festival Hall and in a UK tour by Russian women poets. Her poems appeared in a special Russian women's poetry issue of Modern Poetry in Translation, and a selection of her earlier poetry has been published in the US by Zephyr Press.

Sasha Dugdale is a poet, translator and consultant for the Royal Court Theatre. Her translations include Black Milk and Plasticine by Vassily Sigarev (Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award) and Terrorism by the Presnyakov Brothers. Her first collection of poems Notebook was published by Carcanet / OxfordPoets. In 2003 she received a Gregory Award for this collection.