Akhmatova on the South Bank
Anna of all the Russias: Translating Akhmatova
POETRY International, the South Bank Centre’s biennial festival celebrating poetry from round the world, has always had an eye eastwards, looking to Russia. Partly this lies in the origins of the festival at the height of the Cold War, when Ted Hughes and Patrick Garland determined to bring dissident voices from the Soviet empire to a western audience. Mostly it is because of the extraordinary poetry written by Russians, past and present.
The opening night of Poetry International features new poems written by leading contemporary poets in honour of a great poet whose legacy still inspires us today. For previous festivals we chose poets such as Dante and Lorca, and the idea to have Anna Akhmatova as our subject came from a conversation with Elaine Feinstein, who was steeped in research for a forthcoming biography.
Anna Akhmatova began writing at a time when ‘to think of a woman as a poet was absurd’, as she once remarked ironically. Her genius soared above any such category, yet the human price she had to pay for that triumph was as a wife and mother. She became the voice of a whole people's suffering under Stalinist oppression, and it might have been expected that with the collapse of Communism she would have lost her iconic stature. Instead, her poems are loved across the world.
As we looked at the poems, it was clear that the great themes of love, freedom and patriotism were eternally significant and that Akhmatova’s style raised issues about the use of language in a restricted society. Elaine and I came up with a list of poets whom we would invite to engage with the project, and we were off. Elaine acted as Editor, discussing the choices of poems with the writers and the poet; and translator Sasha Dugdale eagerly accepted the challenge of writing her own poems, as well as producing literals for the non-Russian speakers. Our poets also included Colette Bryce, Poetry International’s Poet in Residence; Michael Donaghy; Carol Ann Duffy; Marilyn Hacker; Jo Shapcott and George Szirtes. Elaine, too, wrote new poems and an introduction that she read on the night.
The poets signed up in February 2004, worked on the poems throughout the spring and on Saturday 23 October they took to the stage in the Purcell Room. Sadly Michael Donaghy was not among them. After submitting his poems, he went to teach in Spain at the end of the summer and on his return died of a brain haemorrhage, suddenly. We, along with all those who loved Michael and his poetry, mourned him. On the night, his glorious poems were read by Carol Ann. She was joined on stage by all the poets who had been part of the project and we paid our respects.
Akhmatova’s poems also stimulated new work by young people at Poetry International, who, as members of Furnace, worked with Colette Bryce in workshops over three days at the Royal Festival Hall to produce a booklet of poems entitled Freedom. Furnace was set up as a collaborative project between two agencies, Apples & Snakes and Spread the Word, to develop young people in their writing and performance skills. As Colette herself commented: 'What would a group of young, hip, performance poets in twenty-first century London have in common with the great, austere Russian poet? Quite a lot it seems.' The resulting poems demonstrate how language acquires new meanings across the centuries, and still resonates for a young generation of poets on the threshold of their lives. I'd like to think that Anna Akhmatova would have been thrilled to know that her poetry lives on in this way and that she still inspires us.
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