Russian Voices Panel I: Polina Barskova and Catherine Ciepiela

Polina Barskova, who was born and raised in St. Petersburg, emigrated to the United States in 1998 after graduating from St. Petersburg University with a degree in Classics; she went on to receive a Slavic PhD from UC Berkeley and now teaches at Hampshire College. She was a child prodigy, publishing her first book at age fifteen, and since then has continued to develop and publish at an amazing rate, with some eight books of poetry to her name (including The Lamentable City [Tupelo, 2010] and The Zoo in Winter [Melville 2010]). Her poems are often autobiographically based but they are not, in any simple sense, confessional; for her, quotidian scenes are occasions to magnify experience with the full power of the mind and senses, leading one critic to describe her as a Romantic. Event takes place as part of Russian Voices Symposium and Philosophical Cabaret - a day long celebration of Russian poetry, music, and culture.