The first ever anthology of feminist poetry from Russia.
Hailed by Gloria Steinem as “a lexicon of dissent that can be shared far and wide", F Letter assembles the feminist poets who have palpably changed the Russian language over the last decade. Against the backdrop of state violence and oppression, this is electric dissent in pursuit of a democratic, egalitarian future. A lexicon for revolution worldwide.
But this poetry's brilliance lies in its rhythm, energy, and depth of emotion—in its universal relevance rather than applied politics. As Eileen Myles writes in their foreword, "there are lines like a curse that yodel radiantly out of the toothy mouth of the curser…lines that are just so fucking metonymic in their grace…I've been invited to witness. To smell the crowd and be charged by history."
F Letter takes its name from the Russian-language journal F pis'mo. Since 2017, this has been the center of feminist and LGBTQ+ writing, protest, and activism across Eastern Europe and Russia. It is rare that literature can wholly reinvent a language—and yet, F Letter has done so at the scale of the letter itself, coining, for instance, the "feminitives" that are now an everydaycontroversy in Russian society. The danger that the authors confront for such transgressive work cannot be underestimated. Many—like F pis'mo's founding editor, Galina Rymbu—are forced into exile under threat of draconian prison sentences, on charges of "pornography" and "gay propaganda."" Others have been added to the "kill list" of the hate group, Pila, which was likely behind the murder of Yelena Gregoriva. And yet, these writers continue to organize—most recently leading the protest against the arrest of the young illustrator Yulia Tsvetkova. "My Vagina," the last poem in the anthology, was composed by Rymbu as its rallying cry. Far from a symbolic act, the poem has, in the space of weeks, been translated into twelve languages and taken up by feminist and LGBTQ+ causes worldwide.
Appropriately, what concerns Rymbu are the contemporary uses of poetry as "a form of public speech and thought, written as if there is someone else present, someone concrete." The aim is that, out of the depths of the failed post-Soviet project, a book itself can create "islands of freedom." A little orange-book that exists as a grounds for feminist movements globally.
As has been noted in The New Inquiry, "publishing these poets presents its own set of difficulties". Russian gag laws effectively censor their work at home and make it less visible abroad. For this reason, isolarii has chosen to print the anthology as a bilingual edition. To bring these poets the attention they deserve and solidify their place in that long tradition—from Baudelaire to Rushdie—of subversive, explosive verse.
Edited by Galina Rymbu, Eugene Ostashevsky, Ainsley Morse.
Foreword by Eileen Myles.
Texts by Lida Yusupova, Daria Serenko, Lolita Agamalova, Elena Kostyleva, Egana Djabbarova, Oksana Vasyakina, Elena Georgievskaya, Stanislava Mogileva, Ekaterina Simonova, Nastya Denisova, Yulia Podlubnova, Galina Rymbu.
published in November 2020
bilingual edition (English / Russian)
7 x 11 cm (softcover)
256 pages
ISBN : 978-1-7350750-1-3
