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Contributor

Ilya Kaminsky

Contributor

Ilya Kaminsky

Ilya Kaminsky is the poetry editor of Words Without Borders. He was born in Odessa, in the former Soviet Union, and came to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government.  He is the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), which won the Dorset Prize and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award. His other awards include a Whiting Writers Award, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, and a Lannan Fellowship. His poems appear in The New Republic, American Literary Review, Southwest Review, Salmagundi, Southeast Review, and other publications. He teaches at San Diego State University.

Articles by Ilya Kaminsky

Correspondences in the Air: On The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry
By Ilya Kaminsky
Octavio Paz once wrote that the modern poet “extracts his visions from within himself.”
A Note from the Poetry Editor
By Ilya Kaminsky
My own joy in working for Words Without Borders is a chance to discover new voices-the thrill of finding a poet or translator whose music changes the way I view the world, the way I breathe, if only for a moment.
“To kiss a forehead is to erase worry.”
By Marina Tsvetaeva
To kiss the lips is to drink water. / I kiss your lips.
Translated from Russian by Ilya Kaminsky
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