Poetry night with Roma Liberov: a lecture on Russian emigre poets followed by poetry recitals

“Yes, I will spend the livelong day With poets in this month of May!” (W.H. Davies) On 23rd May, minstrels and bards of Oxford will convene to indulge in a night full of verse, inspiring dialogues, and wine. To begin with, we will listen to a lecture in Russian by Roma Liberov on Poets of the First-Wave Russian Emigration: the Unnoticed Generation, i.e. those who began writing in exile but never found their readers back home. The symbolic culmination of the First Wave of Russian emigration was the deportation of significant intellectuals in the fall and winter of 1922/23 (a century ago), which was later referred to as the Philosophy steamer. Our guest Roma Liberov is one of the central public intellectuals in the Russian émigré community whose oeuvre includes several mixed-media films commemorating Russian writers and poets. He also produced two musical albums inspired by the poems of Osip Madelstam (Сохрани мою речь навсегда) as well as poets of the "First-Wave" Russian emigration (After Russia, released in January 2023). The latter contains songs performed by popular Russian musicians who were forced to leave Russia because of their anti-war stance after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine. The lecture and Q+A will be followed by poetry recitals in Russian and English. Anyone who would like to recite their original verse is invited to submit their texts via the Google Form attached to this post. Every poet will have up to 10 minutes at their disposal. Please sign up if you would like to attend: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1-zCRT-vVqZDVIudp4viuryR9CdXphEEXfT3yh5_7mZw/edit “I wish you were here dear I wish you were here” (Joseph Brodsky)