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More from Regina Derieva
Left: Cover of Regina Derieva's "The Sum Total of Violations." Right: Cover of Derieva's "Alien Matter."

Read another poem from Derieva: "Dark Thoughts." Then find other work in English on her website and in her books: The Sum Total of Violations, Alien Matter, and Images in Black, Continuous. 

More about Regina Derieva
Black and white photograph of Regina Derieva, seated, looking at the camera with her hands folded on the table in front of her.
Derieva in Beit Safafa, 1994. Courtesy of Alexander Deriev.

"It would be an understatement to name Regina Derieva one of the outstanding writers of the contemporary Russian diaspora," writes Tomas Venclova.  Read critical essays on Derieva's work on her website and the scholar Cynthia Haven's blog.

Then, read about her family's difficulties with immigration in "A Riddle: What Is Catholic, Jewish and Stateless?," published in the New York Times.

More from Translator Valzhyna Mort

In an interview, Valzhyna Mort comments, "I’m a one-person diaspora. But then, who isn’t?" Read more of that conversation in 3:AM magazine.

Then, read other translations and poems from Mort, also published in Words Without Borders.

Finally, read Mort's poetry on the Poetry Foundation website and in the collections Factory of Tears and Collected Body, both from Copper Canyon Press. In the video below, she reads a recent poem, "Singer."

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

From Odessa to Karaganda

Get a glimpse of contemporary childhood in Derieva's birthplace of Odessa in this scene from Dmitry Khazin's documentary Odessa Motives (filmed before Russia's invasion of Ukraine):

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Then, listen to Alexander Galich's song about Derieva's next home, Karaganda, Kazakhstan. "Karaganda, or, About the General's Daughter" tells the story of a woman who spent most of her childhood in the Karaganda prison camp and remained in the remote, barren town after her release. (Russian lyrics.)

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Oy, Karaganda, you, Karaganda! 
You're both mother and stepmother, 
And to me you were always so gentle,
That I became unnecessary even to myself! 
Kara-gan-da . . . !

Listen to Derieva-Inspired Music

Listen to a cantata based on a series of Derieva's poems: Armando Pierucci's De Profundis. 

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

You can find another Pierucci cantata based on Derieva's work, a reading of her "spy poem" "An Honorable Profession," and more on YouTube.

Meet Derieva's Favorite Authors
From left to right: G. K. Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, and Piotr Chaadayev. Public domain, via WIkimedia Commons.

Find out more about three of Derieva's literary influences (whom she also credited for her conversion to Christianity):

  • G. K. Chesterton: Like Derieva, Chesterton began life as a "precocious young writer" with a love of the sea, but "there the similarities ended." Read David P. Deavel's essay "My Face Towards the Impossible," which begins with a comparison of the two authors' lives and works. Then, read Chesterton's paradoxically anti-memorial poem "For a War Memorial." Would Chesterton have considered the objects in the Derieva poem "dead things"?
  • T. S. Eliot: Read extracts of Eliot's "Four Quartets," a poem with religious themes. (You can find more poetry and a biography elsewhere on the Poetry Foundation website).
  • Piotr Chaadayev: "I ask myself every time what could hinder unity, and I always come up with the same answer: an exaggerated feeling of patriotism." Listen to more quotations from his work in a clip from the documentary film Apologia of a Madman:

(Watch the video on YouTube.)

Then, find out why scholar Sarah Young launched her series of lectures on Russian thought with an exploration of Chaadayev.

China's Cultural Revolution
Faded red Chinese characters painted on a brick wall.
Remnants of a banner from the Cultural Revolution in Anhui. By Chang Liu, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The poem mentions:

writing paper from the times of 
the Chinese cultural 
revolution, whatever you 
write on it—
blood stains appear through 
its tissue.

To learn more about China's Cultural Revolution, read the poem "Two or Three Things from the Past," and take a look at some of the resources in the Context and Playlist tabs.

More Writing about the Things We Carry*
An oil painting depicting a table with a bouquet of flowers, a skull, a book, jewelry and coins, a shell, a pipe, and three cups..
"Vanitas—Still Life with a Bouquet and a Skull" by Adriaen van Utrecht, 1642. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

*For Teaching Idea 1

More Paradoxes*
A children's book illustration of a stuffed rabbit on a hill, looking down at two real rabbits.
An illustration from "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Margery Williams. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Poetry:

Prose:

Artwork: "Vanitas" paintings, meant to remind people of the ultimate worthlessness of worldly things.

*For Teaching Idea 2

More Underground Women and Men*
A black, white, and blue photograph looking up at an apartment building. In the bottom left corner, an illustration of a man gazes off to the side.
Illustration from the graphic story "The Apartment in Bab el-Louk."

*For Teaching Idea 3

More Unity and Disunity*
Oil painting of a man in a toga leading a young woman in a pink tunic away from a crowd of swooning people.
"Oedipus and Antigone, or The Plague of Thebes" by Charles Jalabert, 1842. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

*For Teaching Idea 4