A Nottingham Poetry Exchange event

In 1993, Matvei Yankelevich began publishing the Ugly Duckling zine, which transformed, in the late 1990s, into Ugly Duckling Presse. At UDP, Matvei curates the Eastern European Poets Series . He also co-edited the Emergency Gazette (1998-2002) and 6×6 magazine from 2000-2017.

Matvei is the author of Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt (Black Square), the poetry collection Alpha Donut (United Artists), the novella-in-fragments Boris by the Sea (Octopus), and several chapbooks.

He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (for translation) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (for poetry).

His translations of Daniil Kharms were collected in Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms(Ardis/Overlook) and received praise from the TLS, the Guardian, the New York Times, and elsewhere. His co-translation (with Eugene Ostashevsky) of Alexander Vvedensky’s An Invitation for Me to Think (NYRB) received the National Translation Award in 2014.

His critical writing includes essays on Conceptual Poetry (LA Review of Books) and on Russian-American poetry (Octopus). He edited a portfolio of Contemporary Russian Poetry and Poetics for the magazine Aufgabe (No. 8, Fall 2009). Matvei teaches for the Columbia University’s School of the Arts and lives in Brooklyn

(Matvei Yankelevitch’s reading was announced last year but had to be postponed because of the University and College Union strike as he is lecturing locally while visiting)

Matvei will be joined by

Nasser Hussain is a Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at Leeds Beckett University. His first book, boldface was published by Burning Eye Books in 2014, and his new book SKY WRI TEI NGS was published by Coach House Books this year. Nasser has had a number of occupations: treeplanter, wilderness guide, amateur restaurateur, and now academic and poet. He likes his new job best. For him, poems are best described as ‘language with a pattern’, and much of his recent practice takes pleasure in finding new patterns to wonder at. SKY WRI TEI NGS is the first expression of a larger interest in mass transit, and is his attempt to find a literal and poetic intersection between two things that ‘move’ us (in this case, planes and poems).

Here’s Nasser reading: www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVWH7WQ7SWA

Jo Dixon is a poet and critic living in Nottingham. Her poems have appeared in New Walk, The Interpreter’s House and Furies: A Poetry Anthology of Women Warriors (For Books’ Sake), In Transit: Poems of Travel (The Emma Press) and South Bank Poetry. Her debut poetry pamphlet: A Woman in the Queue, was published by Melos Press in May 2016. 

Admission: £3 including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk