My First Book

This book called “Traveller” and published in 1990, includes poetry I wrote between 1979 and 1987. The topics vary, from personal and romantic to philosophical. The book was published in Russia with a very small tirage. The original publishing idea came from my maternal grandparents at a time when I was no longer living at home. They had identified a contact point in Perm who managed to make this project come true at local level. Grandparents felt it would be significant for me to get published in my native country and, when presented with the idea at the time, I agreed. Just a year before, I had revisited Moscow for the first time since I left it at age six, and became reunited with my paternal grandparents. So the time was psychologically right, as they say.

It’s a very small book – 8,5 x 13 cm – what you would call a “pocket edition”.

Let me share a poem with you, written in 1983 – translation is mine. This poem is a kind of declaration of identity:

I CAN’T LIVE ANY OTHER WAY

I can’t live without rejoicing
In a bright and sunlit day.
In the nights, star‑jewelled walks
Are the roads I know, my way.

I can’t help but be enraptured
By the city’s springy greens.
Gulls and sails and waves are magic,
This is what my soul believes.

No, I can’t. I strive and suffer,
Yes, I ache, I curse and cry.
Yet if a new soul were offered
I would say: no way, no, why?

My Second Book

My second book called “Return” was published in 1993, in Moscow. This time the facilitator was my paternal grandmother Anna Puchkova. By that time, I had been to Moscow several times, visiting my grandparents. It really felt like returning although by then my home was in Denmark. Also the political situation in Russia at the time was one of change, and in that atmosphere publishing in the country seemed like a perfectly good thing to do.

The book includes both earlier poems and other productions up to 1992. While overwhelmingly lyrical, it also includes some personal and emotional pieces, as I was coming to grips with my reunion with my native land and the untimely death of my father in 1981. My father and I had never been reunited since I left the country as a child, although seeing him again had been one of my most cherished dreams. I’m sharing here a poem written in 1990, dedicated to my paternal grandmother Anna, from whom I was separated for twenty years. This is a reminder of the personal costs that migration and history can impose on families.

In the Russian Church

From fervent heat thin candles melt,
Icons ablaze with golden waves.
Beneath their kerchiefs, shoulders bent,
The other women cross themselves.

The radiant name of God flows forth,
A vast, majestic, ringing wave.
These women’s eyes resemble so,
Same muted sorrow and same depth.

We’re standing quietly while the saints
From height and breadth of Royal Gates
Observe us gently. In our hearts
Old ache has found a little rest.

Do pray with me, that this long way
May not again be quite so long –
The way towards your hands, your warmth,
The way towards my home’s threshold.