Paper-Thin Skin by Aigerim Tazhi and translated by J. Kates

This is poetry from Kazakhstan.

Paper-Thin Skin by Aigerim Tazhi translated by J. Kates is published by Zephyr Press. This is a Book originally written in Russian. This was published in 2019.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781938890901E12.

Paper-Thin Skin, by Aigerim Tazhi and translated by J. Kates from Russian, brings Russian-language poetry from Kazakhstan into English through Kazakhstani Russian-language fragility, skin, and Aigerim Tazhi’s exacting sensitivity to surface and pressure. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem starts making its own weather. I would read it for skin, paper, fragility, and the dangerous thinness between self and world, not as a fixed lesson about Kazakhstan. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Paper-Thin Skin belongs in the translated poetry library because it widens the Russian-language shelf beyond Russia through a precise, vulnerable Kazakhstani lyric intelligence.

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.