Russian poet and journalist Tatiana Shcherbina spent a week at Dickinson in October 2010 as part of the IX annual Semana Poética poetry festival.
Tatiana graduated from Moscow State University and during the Soviet period five collections of her poetry, as well as a novel, appeared in samizdat. In 1989 she represented alternative (“second”) literature at the Poetry International of Rotterdam, and in that same year her poems began to see publication in the official Soviet press. Between 1992 and 1997 Tatiana lived in Paris, where she continued to write poetry and prose, translated poems from French into Russian, and worked for Radio Liberty. Her original work has been widely translated and included in many of the premiere volumes of contemporary Russian poetry. In 1997 she returned to Moscow and in 2001 she became the deputy editor of the journal Vestnik Evropy (European Messenger) in 2001.
While at Dickinson, Tatiana met with beginning and advanced Russian language students who had been working on translating several of her poems as part of their language study.
“I found [Tatiana Shcherbina’s] use of words to be very fluent, rhythmic, and beautiful. On the one hand, I liked that much of her poetry had a modern edge, as some of it dealt with computers and the internet. On the other hand, much of her poetry was very spiritual and abstract, addressing such topics as the soul, Icarus, and dreams.” --Leah McNamara '13
“Since I’ve been at Dickinson I’ve found that I can more fully appreciate Russian poetry. Here we don’t learn it simply for memorization but, rather, to be able to shed light on Russian society.” --Nealy Harnsberger '13