“It’s no Good” Next Wednesday

Modified from a Wes Russian Department press release.
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A reading by Kirill Medvedev, the poet and activist from Moscow and his translator, Keith Gessen:

April 17th at 4:15 PM in Fisk 210

Kirill Medvedev is a poet and socialist activist from Moscow. He is the founder of the Free Marxist Press and the author, most recently, of It's No Good: Poems/Essays/Actions (NY Times review). He has opted out of the literary world by refusing to copyright his works; the copyright page of It's No Good reads "Copyright denied by Kirill Medvedev, 2012," and the Moscow (NLO) edition of his works is titled “Without Permission of the Author.” Kirill is also the lead singer of Arkady Kots, a protest rock band.

"He comes across as a shambling holy fool, an unkempt mix of Roberto Benigni and Gary Shteyngart. He throws complicated moral thunder. . . . Medvedev's unrhymed, come-as-you-are poems (he is a translator of Charles Bukowski) reject romanticism of any sort." -- Dwight Garner, The New York Times.

Keith Gessen is a founding editor of n+1 and Kirill Medvedev's translator; he has also translated Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and Vladimir Sorokin. He writes about Russia for the New Yorker and the London Review of Books.

Sponsored by the Russian Department
For further information, contact dpozzetti@wesleyan.edu