Tag Archives: Joseph Brodsky

From the diary of a writer-publisher: 27

16 January 2024 I translated a few poems as a teenager and student (Rilke, Brecht, Hölderlin, Pushkin, Tiutchev, Mayakovsky, Yevtushenko, Brodsky), but bothered to see only a couple published. The fact was, I didn’t take verse translation very seriously. I … Continue reading

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 20

16 December 2022 The Times has a long piece today entitled ‘Putin’s absence fuels rumours of Noah’s Ark plot’. It reports Putin cancelling his annual ice hockey match on Red Square, his annual press conference, and his annual ‘conversation with … Continue reading

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Sam&Sam publishers — a brief history

George Calderon: Edwardian Genius will be published under the imprint Sam&Sam. ‘What?’ you ask. ‘What on earth’s that?’ Quite. It was deliberately concocted to give nothing away, because it originated in Russia in the period of samizdat. Having been a dissident … Continue reading

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Attempting to not-bore for England about limericks

I must apologise to all subscribers for their having received notification last week of a blog post that had no text in it! This was the result of human error, aka Aussie Flu. Unfortunately, when I did write the text … Continue reading

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Russia (to be continued)

  There is something I dread at dinner parties: being asked about ‘Russia’. I hope and pray, pray and hope, that no-one has heard I was a ‘Russianist’ in another life, lived in Russia under the Communist regime, smuggled for … Continue reading

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And the asp jumped over the chimney sweeper!

That time of year is approaching again…the time of public readings of verse four of Laurence Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’. I shall be listening carefully for who says ‘grow-not old’, who ‘grow not-old’, and who indeed ‘not grow old’ (see … Continue reading

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