Air Raid by Polina Barskova and translated by Valzhyna Mort

This is poetry from Russia.

Air Raid by Polina Barskova translated by Valzhyna Mort is published by Ugly Duckling Presse. This is a Book originally written in Russian. This was published in 2021.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781946433701E12.

Air Raid, by Polina Barskova, is a Russian poetry collection from Russia, translated by Valzhyna Mort, published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2021. It is a Russian collection shaped by siege, historical terror, and the lyric pressure of threatened civilians. Barskova’s title refuses distance; the poem begins in alarm, impact, shelter, and the mind’s effort to keep perceiving. I would not ask the reader to solve this book before feeling it. The better invitation is to start with the image that will not quite explain itself, then follow the pressure of cadence, silence, and address. For this library, the book matters as more than a representative entry from Russia. It gives English-language readers another route into how poetry travels: not as a tidy report from elsewhere, but as a living encounter with local weather, historical pressure, and the privacy of a voice.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.