Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

There is no winter here – roses bloom even in December. I miss the crunch of snow underfoot, the dry, freezing cold that stirs the blood and makes it run faster through the body, which, alas, has long forgotten the weight of a heavy Russian fur coat, warm hat and boots. But it is not by choice that I am a globetrotter. Whilst following my beloved husband and keeping my own urgent creative and social ambitions under control, I found myself – once and for a very long time – in a rather strange situation: I became a resident of an English village, old as the world itself. Moreover, it was not the village itself, but the premises of a Muslim community which became my home. It was somewhat reminiscent of medieval Pakistan. I knew neither Urdu, nor English (I have studied only French). So, in a flash I became deaf, dumb, blind. I, the celebrated Russian poetess! In Russia, I had a significant social place: my books were published, Russian radio broadcast my poetry and Russian TV showed my films about Russian culture in England. Now I fell into a bottomless pit of seclusion, isolation and near total oblivion. Instead of the hullabaloo of the megalopolis, I had this English back-of-beyond, never predicted for me by any gypsy soothsayer.

In England, God speaks to poets in English, I supposed. What otherwise could be the reason for this long silence from above?

Four years passed, before I once again heard within me that music of transcendent sorrow and suffering, which made my heart beat faster. All those sounds, images, the blurred shape of lines and quatrains, which afterwards turn into poems, slowly returned to me.

My poetical obsession is to re-create a stereo-word, which has had a prior existence to myself. My only task is to hear, extract the sound, pulling it out by its invisible thread and thus liberating from nonexistence a whole chain of meanings. But how could I have hoped to acquire this so very desirable musical polyphony in my linguistic isolation, unable to share a word in Russian with anyone, sometimes for days on end? I virtually gave up hoping, praying only from time to time in the Russian Orthodox Church in London. Once I heard there these fatherly words of comfort: “God knows best where you are most needed”.

Later, we moved to London and bought a house in Dulwich. Once, in autumn, returning home from a walk in the woods, I suddenly felt my all-but-forgotten poetical heartbeat and for the first time here, in this fair alien land, stereo-words resounded in my soul. I realised that God has heard and had taken pity on me. He began to speak to me in Russian. Thus the dumb one started to speak, the blind saw, the deaf heard the birds of paradise singing.

Crazy Gardener and Upbringing of the Garden are two poetry collections written in London. Not just in London, of course: when poems present themselves, it can happen anywhere – Sinai, Avignon, Moscow. Recently collections of my work have appeared in Moscow, St Petersburg and Kyoto.

I often visit Moscow, frequently giving well-attended poetry readings there. I have not been forgotten. So, over there I publish my books and read my poems to large audiences. Here, there is silence.

Once, some years ago, an over-inquisitive poetry enthusiast asked me: “How is it possible for you to live in an alien land? How is it possible to be a Russian poet abroad, living so far away from Russia?” “Maybe, it is not possible”, I answered, “but you cannot stop being a Russian poet.” If God helps you, of course. But that depends not on where your body happens to be situated, but on the whereabouts of your soul.