Poetry. Translated from the Russian by Alan Shaw, Robert Reid, Richard McKane, Andrey Gritsman, Peter France, Kevin Carey, and Ilya Bernstein. Edited by Hildred Crill. "The poetry of Regina Derieva is an outstanding and unusual phenomenon. It corresponds to the poetical experience of Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, and Brodsky, and at the same time keeps pace not only with contemporary Russian but also perhaps world literature. Regina Derieva is a modern poet whoemploys not only traditional but also free verse. Yet she writes out of time, or rather, in the time of the Old Testament and Revelations. Whilereading Regina Derieva's poems, it occurred to me that tradition is something greater than only poetic tradition. Her poetic creations call to mind theWord--Psalms and Prophets, and especially the parables of the Gospels. Following elevated models, Regina Derieva sets in motion secret resources of speech, discovering its paradoxical nature. Lively beat of dictionary, unexpected substitution of notions and interchange of bitterly re-interpreted quotations give her poetry profundity, and quite often, epigrammatical precision. Her images are rather capricious and elusive, at first sight even accidental; but this is deceptive accidention, which is only the other side of necessity"--Tomas Venclova, professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at Yale University and contributor to The New York Review of Books and The New Republic.

Author City: Stockholm SWE

Regina Derieva (b. 1949) is an acclaimed Russian poet and writer. She has published twenty books of poetry, essays, and prose, and her work has been translated into many languages, including English, French, Swedish, Chinese, Italian, and Arabic. Derieva's poems have appeared in Poetry, Quadrant, Modern Poetry in Translation, Salt, Cross Currents, Poetry East, St. Petrsburg Review, Ars Interpres, Notre Dame Review, as well as in many Russian magazines. She has translated poetry by contemporary American, Australian, British, Swedish, and Polish poets. In 2003, Derieva has been awarded the Shannon Fellowship of the International Thomas Merton Society. Regina Derieva currently lives in Sweden.

Reviews and Other Links
author site
Julia Istomina in Salt Magazine
Tomas Venclova in The New Criterion