Poetry From the November/December 2003 issue: Post Social Realism: Literature From Russia

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Larissa MillerLarissa Miller

Born in 1940, Larissa Miller was educated at the Foreign Languages Institute in Moscow and later taught at Moscow University. A major lyrical poet, she is the author of ten books, including Nameless Day; My Land and Home; Let's Talk about the Paradoxes of Love; Holidays, Holidays; and Between the Cloud and the Pit. Dim and Distant Days (English translation published by Glas) is her book of memoirs, looking back over nearly five decades of Soviet history to her hungry but happy childhood in postwar Moscow; her coming of age as a Jewish girl in an anti-Semitic regime; and her encounters with the KGB as an English interpreter in the 1960s and again in the 1980s as the wife of the famous human rights activist Boris Altshuler. Her poems have been translated into English, French, Polish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish. Guests of Eternity, Richard McKane's translation of Between the Cloud and the Pit, was published in 2008 and received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The winner of several literary prizes, Miller was short-listed for the State Prize in 2000.

Read more about Larissa Miller at her personal Russian-English bilingual Web-site: www.larissamiller.ru.

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Translated from RussianRussian by Richard McKaneRichard McKane

Richard McKane was born in 1947 and has a degree in Russian from Oxford University. Based in London, he is a poet and translator of Russian and Turkish poetry.

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