The Pushkin Club presents a history, with readings and recordings of his poetry, of the unofficial artist of the official state.
Dmitry Prigov (1940-2007) was a poet and artist and a leading light in the high-spirited Moscow Conceptualist art scene of the 1980s and ‘90s. He created a satirical concept of the inspired Soviet poet-genius, Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov, who glorifies the ordinary soviet man and heroically fulfils and over fulfils the state production plan.
Prigov started writing poems at the age of 16 and by 2005 had produced about 36,000. He said when you write so many, the intention is to forget rather than remember them. His topics range from mortality to washing-up.
Prigov trained as an artist and sculptor and worked in many different media including film, music, installation and performance art.
In the mid-1980s his street action, “Forewarnings”, led to his detention in a psychiatric institution. He was released only when cultural figures intervened. Prigov’s poems circulated in Samizdat and could only be published at the very end of the communist regime in 1989. His artworks were never exhibited in the USSR.
Witty, topical and absurd, Prigov’s poems reflect the increasing absurdity of the communist regime. They highlight the relationship between power and the individual and expose the emptiness behind the totalitarian narrative.
Prigov’s lyrical poems about the soviet policeman, his play with official soviet-ese and his tongue-in-cheek declamatory style of performing poetry are very entertaining. His language is simple and belies his indefatigable energy.
This event will explore some of his most interesting literary works published this year in English to mark the poet’s 80th anniversary. The translators, Simon Schuchat and Ainsley Morse and publisher Matvei Yankelevich (Ugly Duckling Presse) will talk about Prigov and read their translations. The audience will also get a chance to listen to recordings of Prigov reading his poems, enjoy a performance of his public reading, and witness a glorious deconstruction of Soviet ideology.
A retired American diplomat with over twenty-five years of service, Simon Schuchat worked on U.S.-Russian affairs at the State Department in Washington and in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. His poetry can be found in several rare books, including Svelte (published by Richard Hell when Schuchat was 16), Blue Skies (Some Of Us Press), Light and Shadow (Vehicle Editions), All Shook Up (Fido Productions), and At Baoshan (Coffee House Press), as well as the anthologies None of the Above (edited by Michael Lally) and Up Late (edited by Andrei Codrescu). A native of Washington DC, he attended the University of Chicago and published the journal Buffalo Stamps before moving to New York in 1975 and becoming part of the St. Mark’s downtown writing scene. Active in small press publishing, Schuchat also edited the 432 Review and founded Caveman. In addition to the University of Chicago, he has degrees from Yale, Harvard, and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at the National Defense University. He taught at Fudan University in Shanghai and led workshops at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. In 2016, his translation of Chinese poet Hai Zi’s lyric drama Regicide was published in Hong Kong. In 2020, Ugly Duckling Presse published Soviet Texts, his translation of Moscow conceptualist genius poet Dmitri Alexandrovich Prigov.
Matvei Yankelevich is a founding member of the Ugly Duckling Presse editorial collective and has curated UDP's Eastern European Poets Series since 2002. He teaches translation and book arts at Columbia University's School of the Arts. His co-translation (with Eugene Ostashevsky) of Alexander Vvedensky's An Invitation for Me to Think (NYRB Poets), which received a National Translation Award. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for Humanities. His most recent book of poetry is Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt (Black Square).
Ainsley Morse (left) teaches at Dartmouth College and translates Russian and former Yugoslav literatures. Recent publications include Andrei Egunov-Nikolev’s “Soviet pastoral” Beyond Tula (ASP, 2019), and, with Bela Shayevich, Vsevolod Nekrasov’s I Live I See (UDP, 2013) and Kholin 66: Diaries and Poems (UDP, 2017). With Galina Rymbu and Eugene Ostashevsky, she is editor of the anthology F-Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry (isolarii, 2020).