Dear Kent,

Iron Press's list is as follows: Bella Akhmadulina, Nizametdin Akhmetov,
Gennady Aygi, Tatiana Bek, Joseph Brodsky, Oleg Chukhontsev, Yuri Cobrin,
Vladimir Druk, Veronica Dolina, Mikhail Eisenberg, Sergei Gandlevsky, Polina
Ivanova, Timur Kibirov, Oleg Klebnikov, Vladimir Kostrov, Victor Koval,
Victor Krivulin, Vyacheslav Kuprianov, Tatiana Kuzovleva, Yusus Matzavichus,
Yunna Moritz, Olesia Nikolayeva, Denis Novikov, Bulat Okhudzhava, Dmitri
Prigov, Lev Rubenshtein, Gennady Rusakov, Vladimir Saveliev, Olga Sedakova,
Ekaterina Shevelyova, Elena Shvarts, Boris Slutsky, Larisa Vasilieva, Andrei
Voznesensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

As you see, strange bedfellows. Third Wave appears to me to be a
complementary book to The Poetry of Perestroika, picking up on the
avant-garde set and concentrating on their work. Even so, there are always
exclusions, as you note.

In the spirit of glasnost, we wanted to include as much variety as possible,
the old official lyrical/ballad style of composition was under attack from
all quarters.

They were heady times! In 1991 there was Vodka rationing in Russia, so Peter
Mortimer and I were advised to buy vodka as currency in exchange for food.
We had shadowy meetings under dark railway arches to get our clinking
currency. We met the Almanac crowd again in Eisenberg's flat (handing out
our tenners with our Vodka surplus), where an impromptu party began (I say
began, because half way through it suddenly decamped to cross Moscow to the
flat - I think - of Sergei Gandlevsky.) Numerous toasts insisted that we
drink our vodka tots straight down (not to do so was an insult). Plates of
potatoes and fish (produced by wives, I was sad to note) kept the party from
drunkenness. However it didn't stop one partygoer, who insisted he was the
Economics Minister from the Government, from saying he was going give up his
job to devote himself to poetry. This proclaimed with vodka Hurrahs. He
offered Peter and I a lift home in his official car, which had a mysterious
change-over of chauffeurs in an icy Moscow backstreet at 4 a.m. (end of
shift, was the shrugged explanation). We thought, no, he's some minor
official tired of work. When we got home to England his resignation was
headline news.

Iron Press organised an exchange visit to bring Shvarts, Prigov and Druk to
the North-East of England in 1992. They toured the region for about a
fortnight. Among the readings was one at Morden Tower, Newcastle, where Neil
Astley picked up on Elena Shvarts, eventually bringing out a dual language
collection of hers, Paradise in 1993.

My abiding impression of Russia was a romantic country where gesture was
supremely important. This seemed to purvey every system that might be
operating. Soviet Communism needed that mystical element, described by
Mikhail Epstein, to survive. When it was sacrificed to realpolitik, it was
doomed. Honour, romance, courtliness, panache, these were prized. Again that
odd word glamour comes to mind. Not the glamour of money (if it has any) but
the glamour of drama, of the theatrical moment enhancing life which the
Russians seem to enjoy cultivating. If the current Russian climate crushes
that in its search for gold, then it will have destroyed its most precious
possession. The Russian poets I met were intoxicating (and maybe at times
intoxicated) and lived with a heightened style of aplomb which was very
attractive to us Brits.

Jackie

If you let me have your address you can have a Crimbo present of our book.