War of the Beasts and the Animals

Maria Stepanova is a poet, essayist, journalist and the author of ten poetry collections and three books of essays. She has received several Russian and international literary awards (including the prestigious Andrey Bely Prize and Joseph Brodsky Fellowship). Her book In Memory of Memory is a documentary novel. It won Russia's Big Book Award in 2018 and was published in English by New Directions in the US and Fitzcarraldo in the UK in 2021, and longlisted for the International Booker Prize. It has been published in Germany as Nach dem Gedachtnis (Suhrkamp, 2018). Sasha Dugdale's English translation of her collection of poems War of the Beasts and the Animals is published by Bloodaxe in 2021. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of the online independent crowd-sourced journal Colta.ru. Colta.ru covers the cultural, social and political reality of contemporary Russia, reaching audiences of nearly a million visitors a month in the past.

7 Acknowledgements 9 Translator's foreword from SPOLIA (2015) 21 Spolia 45 War of the Beasts and the Animals from KIREEVSKY (2012) from Girls, Singing 69 Young aeronauts, floating to land... 70 In the white white sky... 71 Mother and Father didn't know him... 73 What is that sweeper, mother... 75 A train runs right across Russia... 76 Over the field the guns howled... 77 Empty featherbeds cooling... 78 Two classical athletes, Culture and Sport... 79 Running, running... 80 By the church's black fence Kireevsky 81 1. The light swells and pulses at the garden gate... 82 2. In the village, in the field, in the forest... 83 3. Tear tears along, chasing tear, and kicks it... 84 4. My lady neighbour drives out on black sables... 85 5. Where the dance was shaped in flame... 86 6. Chorus line, on our feet... 87 7. You my gifts, o my gifts... 88 8. Who guards our picket fences, our blooming hedges... 89 9. A deer, a deer stood in that place... 90 10. The last songs are assembling... from Underground Pathephone 91 Stop, don't look, come close... 92 Don't wait for us, my darling... Poems from earlier collections 97 Bus Stop: Israelitischer Friedhof 100 (as they must) 102 Fish The Body Returns (2018) 107 The Body Returns