Dmitry Kuzmin
Biography
Dmitry Kuzmin, born in 1968, graduated from Moscow State University for Pedagogics and taught literature, working as an Assistant Professor of Foreign Literature and Literary Translation. In 1989 Kuzmin founded the Vavilon Union of Young Poets, the organisational hub for Moscow’s experimental poetry scene. In 1996 he started the Vavilon Internet project, an online anthology of current Russian writing. Since 1993 he has been the head of ARGO-RISK Publishers producing about 20 new poetry titles annually.
He has run several periodicals including the first Russian magazine for gay writing Risk. He is currently editor in chief of Vozdukh, a quarterly poetry magazine. His poetry has been published in translation in many US journals including A Public Space and Words Without Borders, and in two anthologies. His poems have also appeared in Chinese, Polish, and Serbian, amongst many others.
kuzmin has translated the likes of Auden and Cummings into Russian, as well as other work from France, Ukraine and others. A selection of his poems and translations called It’s Fine to Be Alive were published in Russia and won him a Moscow Count award for the Best Debut Poetry Collection.
Books
Хорошо быть живым / It’s Fine to Be Alive (2008)
In Translation
in English
Crossing Centuries: The New Generation in Russian Poetry (2000)
Out of the Blue: Russia’s Hidden Gay Literature (1997)
Prizes and awards
2008 - The Moscow Count Prize
2002 - Andrei Bely Prize of Merit in Literature