#nina iskrenko

[one-divides-into-two]

from 'the guys are under the lean-to discussing god,' by Nina Iskrenko

[alwaysalreadyangry]

Nina Iskrenko (translated by Anne Gutt from Russian) from “Spheres”

Head little head bloodshed Klavka grasska Kafka in the spring comes the swallow bashful edible travel viscous pearly with a pin with a mitten with a mousie without trousers in Lyubertsa in the hearts in a dump truck in the field of birch      in the Columned Hall in the orchard      everyone is wonderstruck

       Are your nerves on fire?

The head has the form of a cube of a loghouse      of sugar       of an unscrewed moon of a fork of a ham of a stool and of the doorman of an English club

/ the half-arsed kind /

***

The guys are under the lean-to discussing God confusing some sort of nonsense with orthodoxy                         I am sitting in the toilet      insides straining insides shuddering                as if bitten by the watchman’s dog

The guys are under the lean-to      under the rain      under the influence                 attempting to express transcendentalism in the terms of fish out of water occasionally interrupting the talk with the cries of a Siberian stag and snatches of Soviet folk song

The guys             one of whom is for some reason American and three others just drowsy from shashlik and gushing patriotism are unable to stop             not having developed the topic completely But in such heavy rain a good host won’t even put out a finger

I am sitting in the toilet                                      dumbfounded by the assertions which occasionally break through their drunken blather                         / If he says      you struggle all the time                     then that’s already not Orthodoxy / You just don’t see it      pardon me      in your Zurichs                                                                  and Vermonts

But you only hear it                sitting in the dacha’s plank closet in the middle of the rain and the beds with lettuce and flowering strawberries

where on a line beats a handkerchief                                        or a single sail or an angel’s wing disturbing the water in the medicinal bath                                                          in the overcast dawn

(from asymptote)

[tendertools]

Допрос - Interrogation

Антигона девочка с приветом Что ты замышляешь под гребенкой Кто тебя ушиб бетонной стенкой Ты же кончишь даже не стройбатом Что ты так вцепилась в эту падаль Гром небесный выгляни в окошко Всюду праздник белые рубашки Унтер-цезарь шпарит по бумажке Умники его стоят поодаль

Над его врагом стоят вороны Он не будет нынче похоронен Он не будет слышишь Антигона Ну и вонь Закройте что ли рамы Может быть ты просто идиотка Кто же ходит поперек трамплина Камикадзе Скомканная ватка В горле триумфального тромбона Антигона посмотри на Дядю У него же лапы как у быдла Антигона У него же когти У него же дети слышишь падло

Пожалей ты старого болвана Что о нем подумают потомки Кардиналы Фюреры Генсеки Антигона У него же танки Ты бухая дщерь кровосмешенья Тани Лариной и Зои-партизанки У тебя же лопнет селезенка Стоит им начать свое шуршанье У тебя же ухо в рот поедет Как они свои откроют сейфы Антигона Нет такого кайфа На какой у них мозгов не хватит

Или ты не знаешь гороскопа Вспомни Боги потакают Эпигонам Гуннам конокрадам и легавым Или ты ослепла с недосыпа Ну очнись же Братец твой подонок А жених не курица – ни яйца Будь они из Фив или с Лубянок Ахинейцы это Ахинейцы

Деточка А может ты стукачка Шустрая Лаврушкина подружка Биогормональная ловушка И гребешь себе по безналичке Или ты никак с иглы не спрыгнешь Или что не сходиться по Фрейду У тебя в башке какой-то клавиш Западает Хочешь сигарету? Ну подумай на кого ты тянешь

Хахали твои отвоевались Скурвились дружки А может вышли в люди Кто в Пелопонес Кто в мегаполис Кто опричь Да то ли еще будет

Антигона В мире антиномий В мире верблюжатины и СПИДа В фокусе общественного бреда В мире книг животных и спецмнений Кто ты Антиголубь Антимира Или диссидентская химера В ракурсе Софокла и афгана В темноте в отчаянье в тщете Во главе и в ГУМе в фонтана Со щитом ты или на щите Антигона кто ты Антигона

- ANTIGONE you crazy little twitch What does that braided head of yours conceal Has someone hit you with a concrete wall You’d be lucky to end up a kitchen wench

Why can’t you just let go of this carcass Thunder and lightning Have a look outside Today’s a holiday  Everyone’s wearing white And Mr. Caesar’s well-groomed speech drones on His clever toadies stand behind as one

The crows circle ‘round and ‘round his enemy You know quite well he won’t be buried today HE WON’T BE BURIED Do you hear Antigone By Gods it stinks  Won’t someone close the windows

Or maybe you are just an idiot lil’ girl What kind of dumbass walks across a trampoline A kamikaze Tiny cotton ball Inside the throat of a triumphant trombone

Antigone  Just think about your Uncle My dear you see he’s scum with saskwatch paws Antigone d’you hear me he’s got claws Goddamit he’s got kids  You numbskull

Oh have some pity for the good old fool Consider what his followers will think Führers Soviet Premiers and Cardinals Antigone  Remember he’s got tanks

You’re nothing but a drunken mixed-blood child Romantic heroine-cum-Zoya the Partisan But don’t you know your spleen will split When they begin their mousy rustling

They’ll crush your head Your lips will kiss your ears When they unlock their mighty vaults You know Antigone they get high off it They won’t come down There’ll always be more bodies

Or maybe you don’t know the horoscope The gods bestow their gifts upon the Epigones The Huns the horse stealers and the squealers Or are you blind from lack of sleep

Come on wake up   Your brother was a jerk And your fiancé’s neither fish nor foul And whether they’re from Thebes or from the Gulag Crapoleans are always just Crapoleans

Hey girl maybe you’re a squealer yourself Beria’s rosy-cheeked young friend A biological or perhaps hormonal trap Who gets a pretty penny for her work

Or maybe you’re addicted Need your fix Or something’s off in you as Freud would think Is there some key inside your stupid head That’s sticking Do you want a cigarette

Just think  Who could you ever be

Your suitors gave up long ago on their wars And all your buddies have become little whores Or maybe they rose up the social ladder Some went to the Peloponnese Some to a megapolis And some did other things  And that’s just the beginning

Antigone   In the world of antinomies In the world of camel meat and AIDS On a talk show of public dysentery “In the World of Great Books” animals and doubts

Who are you   The Anti-Dove of Anti-Peace or a ghost of a dissident past seen through the lenses of Sophocles   and the war in Afghanistan in the dark  in despair  in vain in charge in the mall on Red Square by the fountain victorious or dead

Antigone Who are you Antigone

Нина Искренко - Nina Iskrenko

Translated from Russian by Olga Livshin

Photography of the author

[finita-la-commedia]

Are your nerves on fire ?

Nina Iskrenko (Russian, 1951–1995), from “Spheres”   

[sochinetz-blog]

Canvases - a song on the poems of Nina Iskrenko. Холсты - песня на стихи Нины Искренко.

[beijingbrown]

Face Control - the back cover. 

[tamirichards]

Nina Iskrenko

From the chaos known as the collapse of the Soviet Union came the poet Nina Iskrenko (1951–1995) who’s exploration of pen to paper not only broke through customary standards of poetry writing, but also spread a bit of free thinking throughout a land which found that it was no longer under the rule of the iron hand. Pasted below is Another Woman, which is an amazing piece. As I read this piece, I…

[one-divides-into-two]

from 'spheres,' by nina iskrenko

[alwaysalreadyangry]

[alwaysalreadyangry]

a few thoughts on cancer in writing:

i get attached to writers, artists etc. when i find out they had cancer young (or at all, but especially under the age of 60). i feel protective, like we’re kin. this is how i feel about nina iskrenko, a poet i know almost nothing about. but she died of cancer in her 40s. her poetry is striking and beautiful and strange. i can’t find her one book in english because it costs £100 secondhand and only one library in the country has a copy. but i want to know her. i have to read her.

& then i still want to just read a book where a character is going through it, or has gone through it, and it’s not the main point of the book, it’s just there. not a cancer memoir or a cancer novel. like, a fantasy book that doesn’t pretend that cancer doesn’t exist, or that people don’t live with it.

i’ll never forgive sarah gailey’s book magic for liars for just springing multiple cancer tragedies on me. we never see the people who went through it as people, only as plot devices, past deaths to motivate the main characters.

[tendertools]

Poetesses (update)

Since I started this blog a couple of years ago, I've been posting works by poetesses from all around the world as I came across them randomly in books or on various websites, forming the pattern of this little, partial and irregular anthology. By doing this I just wish to share those amazing texts it might be sometimes difficult to get aware of.

Here is an author list you can use at any time, with poems in bilingual (Original language/English) versions. The links are broken these days as I changed the name of this blog, but I’ll try to restore them as soon as possible!

Helen Adam Anna Akhmatova* Amal Al-Jubouri* Takako Arai Ana Blandiana Emily Brontë° Ana Brnardić Gwendolyn Brooks Karin Boye (1) (2) Ilzė Butkutė° Susan Connolly Corinna° Vladimíra Čerepková* H.D. Nastya Denisova Regina Derieva* Marceline Desbordes-Valmore Hilde Domin* Hélène Dorion kari edwards Jun Er Erinna* Ida Faubert Jennifer Elise Foerster° Marie de France Jane Gentry° Nikki Giovanni° Lavinia Greenlaw Anjum Hasan Ana Paula Inácio Nina Iskrenko Mirela Ivanova Anka Žagar Elena Kacyuba* Manju Kanchuli Mary Karr° Doris Kareva Judit Kemenczky* Farzaneh Khojandi Sarah Kirsch* Barbara Köhler Masayo Koike Rachel Korn Lina Kostenko Taja Kramberger Louise Labé° Katalin Ladik Christine Lavant Ursula K. Le Guin Audre Lorde° Amy Lowell° Eeva-Liisa Manner Kseniya Marennikova* Kettly Mars Iman Mersal Larissa Miller Marianne Moore Valzhyna Mort Isabella Motadinyane Shahnaz Munni Eileen Myles Mary Oliver° Lisa Olstein° Kristín Ómarsdóttir Dorothy Parker° Sophia Parnok (1) (2) Esdras Parra Eugénie Paultre Valentine Penrose Sibila Petlevski Petrőczi Éva Halyna Petrosanyak Diane Di Prima Claudia Rankine Adrienne Rich° Lalla Romano* Muriel Rukeyser Amina Saïd° Edna St. Vincent Millay Maya Sarishvili Gjertrud Schnackenberg Olga Sedakova Anne Sexton° Naomi Shihab Nye° Izumi Shikibu (1) (2) Savita Singh Charlotte Smith° Maggie Smith° Edith Södergran* Ingrid Storholmen* Wisława Szymborska (1) (2) (3) (4) Chimako Tada Anyte of Tegea Chouchanik Thamrazian Élise Turcotte Ijeoma Umebinyuo° Marie Under Maud Vanhauwaert Renée Vivien Rosmarie Waldrop Mary Webb Maria White Lowell° Eleanor Wilner Uljana Wolf Liliane Wouters Liu Xia° Wang Xiaoni Ling Yu

(°= reblog from other tumblr users, *= my own translation)

Please don’t hesitate to send me suggestions of poems for this little anthology, I would be so happy to read and add them on this page!

[tendertools]

earl grey, matcha and pu-erh :) (bonus question: have you ever tried pu-erh and do you like it?)

Earl grey: Currently, I most often take my tea in an giant ugly cup with donuts patterns which is pretty comfortable, as you can easily drop pieces of ginger or indecent spoons of honey in it while still saving enough place for your teabag and your teaspoon ^^ I love to drink my tea or infusion verrry warm, which is actually how my tongue gets burn on a weekly basis, but also a nice way to fight against cold evenings in these mid-autumn days, when you never really know if you should finally open up the heating system of your flat ;)  

Matcha: I think the best way to answer to this question is to consider books I wouldn't be able to not (re)read regularly, as I am totally unable to pick up just one title! So, poetry: Wisława Szymborska, Joseph Brodsky, Pablo Neruda, Rosmarie Waldrop, Pierre Reverdy, Karin Boye, Paul Celan, Nina Iskrenko, Dylan Thomas, Sophia Parnok... A few novels: Another Country by James Baldwin, The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky... It's really difficult to get a kind of list out of it ^^

Pu-erh: 1) I'm allergic to cats but I dream about having one at home 2) I bought my favorite jazz score on the flea market in Lviv a few years ago, and it's a collection of both American and Soviet jazz waltzes 3) The two upright pianos I ever owned in my life were a Soviet "Lyra" that I had to sell when we moved out from our flat in Moscow with my wife, and an American "Baldwin" made in Ohio in the 60's which is still with us here in France and on which I play on a regular basis ^^

Bonus: I never tried Pu-erh but now I know about it I really wish to!

Thank you so much for asking, @joghurtbrot!

[tendertools]

Poetesses (A little anthology)

Since I started this blog a couple of years ago, I've been posting works by poetesses from all around the world as I came across them randomly in books or in the internet, forming the pattern of a little, partial and irregular anthology. By doing this I just wish to share those amazing texts it might be sometimes difficult to get aware of - and as I realized it can be quite tricky to track them back in the archive, I added a single link on the left menu through which you can acess permanently to all these poems ;)

It is a simple author list you can consult at any time ^^:

Helen Adam Anna Akhmatova* Amal Al-Jubouri* Takako Arai Ana Blandiana Emily Brontë° Ana Brnardić Gwendolyn Brooks Karin Boye Ilzė Butkutė° Susan Connolly Corinna° Vladimíra Čerepková* H.D. Nastya Denisova Regina Derieva* Marceline Desbordes-Valmore Hilde Domin* kari edwards Jun Er Jennifer Elise Foerster° Marie de France Jane Gentry° Nikki Giovanni° Lavinia Greenlaw Anjum Hasan Ana Paula Inácio Nina Iskrenko Mirela Ivanova Anka Žagar Manju Kanchuli Mary Karr° Doris Kareva Judit Kemenczky* Farzaneh Khojandi Barbara Köhler Masayo Koike Rachel Korn Lina Kostenko Taja Kramberger Louise Labé° Katalin Ladik Christine Lavant Ursula K. Le Guin Audre Lorde° Amy Lowell° Eeva-Liisa Manner Kettly Mars Iman Mersal Larissa Miller Marianne Moore Valzhyna Mort Isabella Motadinyane Shahnaz Munni Eileen Myles Mary Oliver° Lisa Olstein° Kristín Ómarsdóttir Dorothy Parker° Sophia Parnok (1) (2) Eugénie Paultre Valentine Penrose Petrőczi Éva Halyna Petrosanyak Diane Di Prima Claudia Rankine Adrienne Rich° Lalla Romano* Amina Saïd° Edna St. Vincent Millay Maya Sarishvili Gjertrud Schnackenberg Olga Sedakova Anne Sexton° Naomi Shihab Nye° Izumi Shikibu (1) (2) Savita Singh Charlotte Smith° Maggie Smith° Edith Södergran* Ingrid Storholmen* Wisława Szymborska (1) (2) (3) (4) Chimako Tada Anyte of Tegea Chouchanik Thamrazian Ijeoma Umebinyuo° Marie Under Renée Vivien Mary Webb Maria White Lowell° Eleanor Wilner Uljana Wolf Liu Xia° Wang Xiaoni Ling Yu

(°= reblog from other tumblr blogs, *= my own translation)

Please don’t hesitate to send me suggestions of poems for this little anthology, I would be so happy to read and add them on this page!