This year’s Compass Award competition was dedicated to the work of Maria Petrovykh (1908-79). Petrovykh was a poet of exquisite precision and subtlety – a friend of Osip Mandelstam, serving as an inspiration for his famed “Masteritsa vinovatykh vzorov,” and of Anna Akhmatova, who called her “Naznach’ mne svidan’e na etom svete” a “lyric masterpiece.” Yet, unlike her fellow masters, she hasn’t attained universal recognition. In part, this is due to her own humility; she published only one collection in her lifetime, and devoted most of her professional life to editing and translating the work of others. We felt it was high time for Petrovykh's own verse to benefit from the attention of translators as gifted and inspired as she herself was.

WINNERS OF THE 2013 COMPASS AWARD:

1st prize ("Compass" and $300)
Josephine von Zitzewitz (Oxford, UK)
Prayer in the Woods («Молитва в лесу»)

2nd prize ($150)
Alexandra Berlina (Dusseldorf, Germany)
The spring, so sensuous...(«Весна так чувственна. Прикосновенье ветра...»)

3rd prize ($100)
Peter Oram (UK-Germany)
Out of nowhere, it comes...(«И вдруг возникает какой-то напев...»)

Honorable Mention:
Nora Krouk (Sidney, Australia)
Grant me a meeting...(«Назначь мне свиданье...»)

The Compass Award-2013 Ceremony and Reading will take place on Tuesday, January 28, 2014 at Pushkin House in London.

Time: 7:30
Address:
5a Bloomsbury Square, London, WC1A 2TA. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7269 9770

The poet for the 2014 competition will be announced on November 30, 2013 at the First Oleg Woolf Memorial Readings at the Museum of Russian Art in Jersey City, NJ, USA.

Please follow our Cardinal Points Facebook page for updates.

THE 2013 COMPASS AWARD SHORT LIST AND RANKING:

1) Prayer in the Woods (Молитва в лесу ) - Josephine von Zitzewitz, UK.

2) The spring, so sensuous... («Весна так чувственна. Прикосновенье ветра...») - Alexandra Berlina, Germany.

3) Out of nowhere, it comes...(«И вдруг возникает какой-то напев...») - Peter Oram, UK.

4) Grant me a meeting... («Назначь мне свиданье...») - Nora Krouk, Australia.

5) Black raven, black foe... («Чёрный ворон, чёрный вран...») - Dina Gusejnova, UK.

6) Unasked and unbidden, there comes a refrain... («И вдруг возникает какой-то напев...») - Olga Varshaver, Russia.

7) Every step we take we ponder, wary... («Без оглядки не ступить ни шагу...») - Ksenya Gurshtein, US.

The shortlisted translations will be published in both Cardinal Points and Стороны Света journals, as well as in Russiapedia – a special online encyclopedic project by RT.