Venya Gushchin is a poet, literary translator, and PhD Candidate at Columbia University, writing a dissertation on the late styles of Russian modernist poets. His translations of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Elizaveta Mnatasakanova have received the Columbia University Slavic Department Pushkin Prize. Blockade Swallow, selected poems by Olga Berggolts translated by Gushchin, appeared from Smokestack Books in 2022. Most recently, his translation of Yevsey Tseytlin’s Rereading Silence was published by Bagriy & Company. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Action, Spectacle, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. Read more on his Linktree.
sky off the sill of opportunity we stole had the flat awakeness of too much black tea. unseen at lauds and silent flush against the wall we followed our ivy, free to roughly crawl, to clasp ourselves unfree, to become as whispered syntax tangled up like like like pilgrims edging towards, lest they profane the coming blush of dawn. how… Read more →