Born in 1976 in Leningrad — now called St. Petersburg, as before — Polina Barskova began publishing poems in journals at age nine and released the first of her seven books as a teenager. She came to the United States at the age of twenty to pursue a Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, having already earned a graduate degree in classical literature at the state university in St. Petersburg. Barskova now lives in Massachusetts and teaches at Hampshire College. Her two books of poetry in translation are coming soon from Tupelo Press and Melville House Press, previously her poems have been translated into French, Italian, Danish.
These poems are from Polina Barskova's forthcoming collection The Zoo in Winter: Collected Poems (Melville House Press, Spring 2011). Translated by Boris Dralyuk and David Stromberg.