Take Me to Stavanger

Anzhelina Polonskaya is a Russian writer and artist from Malakhovka, a small town near Moscow. She is the author of A Voice, To the Ashes, and Paul Klee’s Boat, all of which were translated into English by Andrew Wachtel. Her poetry has also been translated into German, Dutch, Slovenian, Latvian, and Spanish.

A gripping lyric examination of exile, Anzhelina Polonskaya’s Take Me to Stavanger devastates in its imagistic exactitude. In a world riven by war, no matter which country is ‘yours,’ Polonskaya writes, ‘You’re guilty wherever you go.’ Yet, somehow—within her spare, razor-sharp glimpses of joy and beauty—‘we lived as we could.’ Polonskaya’s poetry speaks across borders despite the risks of doing so; translator Andrew Wachtel brings it, in its full power and sight, to English readers.