MFA Candidate in Literary Translation from Russian
Val Ocean is deeply fascinated by the sounds of poetry, finding meaning in the musicality and rhythm of languages across cultures. A translator of Russian poetry, Val draws inspiration from the works of Pushkin, Mandelstam, Khlebnikov, Nabokov as well as the Futurists and contemporary voices. He also finds intellectual influence in the ideas of Roman Jakobson and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Val has been writing poetry in Russian since an early age, and is now translating his own more recent works into English for publication in the United States.