Freedom Is: The Poetry of Vsevolod Nekrasov, Lianozovo, Conceptualism, and Avant-Garde Roots

A bilingual Russian/English reading, presenting the poetic works of the late Russian Non-Conformist poet, Vsevolod Nekrasov, in the context of his contemporaries and his earlier avant-garde influences. Nekrasov was associated with several of the most important poetic and artistic circles from the 1960s through the 1980s, including the Lianozovo school, Konkret, and Moscow Conceptualism. He also wrote about the visual artists of his time, many of whose works are included in the Zimmerli’s quintessential collection of Russian Non-Conformist Art.
Russian-American poets and translators from New York — Alex Cigale, Bela Shayevich, Eugene Ostashevsky, and Matvei Yankelevich — will be reading (in Russian and in English translations) poetry by Vsevolod Nekrasov, and the work of Nekrasov’s contemporaries and associates, including Ivan Akhmetiev, Vagrich Bakhchanian, Igor Kholin, Dmitri A. Prigov, Lev Rubinstein, and Genrikh Sapgir, as well as important predecessors to post-war underground poetry, such as Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky. The English texts include anthologized translations by J. Kates, Gerald Janecek, Paul Schmidt, and Gerald Smith, as well as new translations prepared by the presenters themselves. (The reading is curated by Matvei Yankelevich, editor of the Eastern European Poets Series at Ugly Duckling Presse, Brooklyn, NY.)