Two Poems

Inna Kabysh, born in 1963, residing in Moscow, is the author of six volumes of poetry and winner of the Pushkin Prize. Yet, with the exception of several short poems published in anthologies of contemporary Russian writing, almost none of her work has been translated into English. Artist’s Proof Editions introduces a multi-touch edition of two notable poems by this poet who should be known more widely, in Katherine E. Young’s award-winning translations. Since video poems are a lively genre in Russia, we drew also upon the great Russian tradition and made two video-and-sound montages in response and homage. We launch them in Two Poems.


Inna Kabysh is the author of six books of poetry: Lichnye trudnosti (1994), Detskiy mir (1996), Mesto vstrechi (2000), Detstvo, otrochestvo, detstvo (2003), Nevesta bez mesta (2008), and Mama myla ramu (2013). In 1996, Inna Kabysh was awarded Russia’s Pushkin Prize.  She is also an awardee of the Alfred Toepfer Fund (Hamburg, Germany) and winner of the Anton Delwig Prize (2005). 


Katherine E. Young’s translations of Inna Kabysh were awarded a share of the 2011 Joseph Brodsky-Stephen Spender Prize and commended by the judges of the 2012 Brodsky-Spender Prize. Her translations of Vladimir Kornilov appear in Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky (Penguin Classics, forthcoming).  Her Day of the Border Guards, a collection of original poems, appears in the University of Arkansas Poetry Series.


Contents of this multi-touch edition include “This Is Life, The Summer House” and “Yuri Gagarin Was A Great Russian Poet,” in the original and in translation, with commentary, audio, and video, authors’ biographies, and colophon. The poems are from Inna Kabysh’s Nevesta bez mesta (Moscow: Vremya 2008).