The rules of Baratynsky Day are simple. All invited readers may read “One Russian Poem.” If they are reading their own work, they must read it in both English and Russian (and another language, if they like!)

Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky (Евге́ний Абра́мович Бараты́нский) was born either on March 2nd or February 19th [depending on your geopolitical inclinations] in the year 1800. He was lauded by Alexander Pushkin as the finest Russian elegiac poet. After a long period of neglect, Baratynsky was taken up by Russian Modernist poets who considered him a supreme poet of thought. This “most daring and dark of the nineteenth-century poets,” as Michael Wachtel has called him, inspired Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, and later, according the Nobel laureate himself, forced a young Joseph Brodsky “to get more seriously into writing.”

At the suggestion of Anton Pascuill, a patron of St. Rocco’s Readings for the Dispossessed, we have gathered for the past few years in Albany around Baratynsky’s birthday to drink tea, eat sushki, and share our favorite Russian poems, old and new, read aloud. Since the pandemic has made this annual event impossible, the curators of St. Rocco’s Readings for the Dispossessed have teamed up with Ugly Duckling Presse to launch an online celebration of Russian Poetry—BARATYNSKY DAY—featuring poets and translators from around the world. This Third Annual Baratynsky Day celebration is presented in association with the University at Albany—Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures.

To RSVP for the event, click here.