Larissa Shmailo

Larissa Shmailo (born 1956 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American poet, translator, novelist, editor, and critic.[1][2]

Biography

Shmailo is the daughter of Sinaida and Nikolai Shmailo, who emigrated to the United States in 1950 from the Ukraine via the displaced persons camps of World War II after internment in the Mittelbau-Dora (Dora Nordhausen) concentration camp. Shmailo has recorded her parents' experience in her poem, "How My Family Survived the Camps" and in fictionalized form in her novel, Patient Women.[3]

Shmailo was educated at New York City's Hunter College High School, The American School in Switzerland, and Barnard College (1979), although episodes of mental illness and substance abuse interrupted her studies. She was married in 1985 to Steven Charles Werner, who drowned on the couple's honeymoon, as recounted in Shmailo's poem "Death at Sea." Her second and third marriages to Hans Goldfuss in 1988 and Eric Yost in 2000 ended in divorce. As a poet, Shmailo is known as an experimentalist and a neoformalist, as well as a spoken word artist.[4] She translated the first Futurist opera,Victory over the Sun, at the age of twenty-two, but began her literary career in earnest in 1993 in New York City's open mike poetry scene as curator of the reading series Sliding Scale Poetry. She went on from there to win recognition as a poet, translator, novelist, anthologist, editor, and critic in Russia, India, and across the United States.

Literary Biography

Shmailo's new hybrid novel is Sly Bang, forthcoming in January 2019 from Spuyten Duyvil; her first novel was Patient Women (BlazeVOX). Her poetry collections are Medusa’s Country (MadHat), #specialcharacters (Unlikely Books), In Paran (BlazeVOX), the chapbook, A Cure for Suicide (Červená Barva Press), and the e-book Fib Sequence (Argotist EBooks). Shmailo’s work has appeared in Plume, the Brooklyn Rail, Fulcrum, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Journal of Poetics Research, Drunken Boat, Barrow Street, Gargoyle, and the anthologies Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Penguin Random House), Words for the Wedding (Penguin), Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey), Resist Much/Obey Little: Poems for the Inaugural (Spuyten Duyvil), and many others. Shmailo is the original English-language translator of the world's first performance piece, Victory over the Sun by Alexei Kruchenych, performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Garage Museum of Moscow, the Brooklyn Academy of Art, and theaters and universities worldwide. Shmailo also edited the anthology Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry (Big Bridge Press) and has been a translator on the Russian Bible for the American Bible Society. Shmailo’s work is in the libraries of Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford and New York universities, the Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn, and other universities and museums. Please see more at www.larissashmailo.com.

[5]

Work

Victory over the Sun

Shmailo was the original translator of Victory over the Sun by Aleksei Kruchenych for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's celebrated reconstruction of the first Futurist opera and performance piece in 1980.[6] This translation has been used for productions at the Museum of Natural History in New York, the Smithsonian, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.[7] Most recently, it was featured at the Cornelia Café with poet-actor Bob Holman in the role of The Time Traveler and was part of the Garage Museum of Moscow’s 2014 retrospective of Russian performative art.[8] The “opera” received a high-tech full restaging with digital sets and synthesized music at Boston University on April 23, 2015.[9]

Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry

Shmailo edited the free online anthology of ultra-contemporary Russian poetry, Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry. The anthology, which appeared in the online poetry omnibus Big Bridge in 2013, has been disseminated internationally via social media and e-mail.[10]

HOWL (Humanities Opposition World League)

Shmailo is the co-founder, with Alice Sieve, of HOWL, an international anti-fascist collective of artists and scholars. Shmailo wrote the manifesto for the group and serves as editor for HOWL publications. The collective was founded on Election Day, 2016.[11]

The Feminist Poets in Low-Cut Blouses

Shmailo founded the irreverent poetry organization of “men, women, and others” in 1993. The group performs regularly at The New York City Poetry Festival and at venues throughout New York City.[12]

Readings

Shmailo has read at hundreds of venues nationally, including the Knitting Factory, Association of Writers and Writing Programs conferences, the Bowery Poetry Club, The Langston Hughes Residence, Barnard College, New York University, Lesley University, and other colleges and universities.

Translation of Her Poems

Mohammad Mostaghimi, an Iranian poet who lives in Isfahan, has translated some of her poems into Persian. Most of them are published on his weblog 'dishe sepid'.

Professor's Helper (TM)

Shmailo is incorporated as Larissa Shmailo, Inc., doing business as Professor's Helper (TM).[13]

Reviews of Shmailo's Work

Reviews of Shmailo's work by Chris Campanioni, Michael T. Young, Dean Kostos, and Jeff Hansen have appeared in the Brooklyn Rail; Books for Readers; The Lit Pub; Unlikely Stories; Altered Scale and other publications.

Selected publications

Patient Women, a Novel

Shmailo's debut novel, called "a brutally honest wrestling match of truth-telling and sex" and "the best book . . . about this period of life in NYC since Patti Smith's Just Kids," was published by BlazeVOX Books in July 2015. The work is a semiautobiographical bildungsroman about sex and substance addiction in the Woodstock and punk rock eras and the early days of AIDS, and features a transgender leading character. Chapters deal with prostitution, incest, and the Holocaust [14][15] [16][17]

Poetry Books and CDs

Shmailo's poetry collections are Medusa's Country (MadHat Press 2017),[18] #specialcharacters (Unlikely Books 2014),[19] In Paran (BlazeVOX [books] 2009) [20] and the chapbooks A Cure for Suicide (Červená Barva Press 2006) [21] and Fib Sequence (Argotist Ebooks 2011) [22] Her poetry CDs are The No-Net World (2006) and Exorcism (2009) (SongCrew); tracks are available in digital distribution [23]

Selected Anthologies

Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Meter (Everyman’s Library/Penguin Random House; Words for the Wedding (Perigee Books /Penguin Putnam); Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey Archive Press); Resist Much / Obey Little (Spuyten Duyvil); Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Wiseman); The Unbearables Big Book of Sex (Autonomedia); From Somewhere to Nowhere: The End of the American Dream (The Unbearables); Verde que te quiero verde: Poems after Federico Garcia Lorca (Pederson); About: Poetry/About.com Spring Poems 2007 Anthology ; Occupy Wall Street.

Selected Journals

Plume, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, The Common, St. Petersburg Review, Gargoyle, Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, FULCRUM, Rattapallax, Journal of Poetics Research, Eoagh, Eco-Poetry, Eleven Eleven, Atlanta Review, Lungfull!, MiPoesias, The Journal of Interdimensional Poetry

Selected Conference Presentations

• Panelist, The Semi-formal: Hybrid Free and Formal Verse. Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, Tampa, March 2018.

• Moderator, Endangered Music: Formal Poetry in the 21st Century. Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, Los Angeles, April, 2016.

• Performer and panelist, Victory over the Sun restaging at Boston University, April, 2015.

• Moderator, Daughters of Baba Yaga: The Eastern European Woman Poet in the United States. Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, Minneapolis, April, 2015.

• Panelist, Translation from Pushkin to Pussy Riot. Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, Minneapolis, April, 2015.

• Guest, Cross-Cultural Communications, PennSound Radio, April, 2015

• Poetry reading on Jung's Red Book, Art and Psyche Conference, New York University, July 2012

Critical Writing

Shmailo has written on Daniil Kharms, Bob Holman, Annie Finch, Elaine Equi, Philip Nikolayev, and other poets and writers for the Journal of Poetics Research, The Battersea Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Jacket and Jacket2.

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ http://cafedissensusblog.com/2015/06/25/in-conversation-with-poet-larissa-shmailo/
  2. ↑ http://wordmothers.com/2015/03/09/interview-with-poet-and-author-larissa-shmailo/
  3. ↑ https://www.amazon.com/How-My-Family-Survived-Camps/dp/B0015HGFKG./
  4. ↑ http://www.brooklynrail.org/2015/07/books/versions-and-perversions-or-get-rich-or-die-tryin<<
  5. ↑ http://www.cervenabarvapress.com/shmailointerview.htm; http://www.drunkenboat.com/?p=2715; https://soundcloud.com/larissashmailo/madwoman http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com/2009/06/madwoman-exercises-civil-right.html http://www.drunkenboat.com/db10/07mis/shmailo//; http://thebatterseareview.com/critical-prose/213-philip-nikolayev-s-embedded-sonnets-the-combinatorics-of-context; https://www.facebook.com/LarissaShmailoPoetryandProse%7Cdate=May 2015 http://larissashmailo.blogspot.com
  6. ↑ http://rbth.com/literature/2015/01/21/the_enduring_appeal_of_russias_avant-garde_43039.html
  7. ↑ {New York Times Victory over the Sun review 1983; https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/20/arts/russia-s-cubo-futurists-created-a-startling-opera.html New York Times Victory over the Sun review 1981 https://www.nytimes.com/1981/01/27/arts/theater-victory-over-the-sun.h
  8. ↑ http://rbth.com/literature/2015/01/21/the_enduring_appeal_of_russias_avant-garde_43039.htmlhttp://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/list.asp?sdate=3/11/2015&from_cal=0/
  9. ↑ |http://www.bu.edu/european/2015/03/12/victory-over-the-sun/
  10. ↑ http://bigbridge.org/BB17/poetry/twentyfirstcenturyrussianpoetry/twenty-first-century-russian-poetry-contents.htm;/23/fifty_russian_poets_unveiled_in_online_anthology_28317.html/; http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2013/07/a-new-anthology-of-21st-century-russian-poetry/
  11. ↑ https://119howl.wordpress.com/manifesto/
  12. ↑ http://coldfrontmag.com/poetry-festival-preview-the-feminist-poets-in-low-cut-blouses/
  13. ↑ http://www.professorshelper.com/
  14. ↑ https://www.amazon.com/Patient-Women-Larissa-Shmailo/dp/1609642015
  15. ↑ http://cafedissensusblog.com/2015/06/25/in-conversation-with-poet-larissa-shmailo/
  16. ↑ http://www.connotationpress.com/crazy-rabbits-review/2646-larissa-shmailo-fiction-poetry
  17. ↑ http://www.villagevoice.com/event/nyc-launch-of-larissa-shmailos-patient-women-7541598
  18. ↑ http://madhat-press.com/products/medusas-country-by-larissa-shmailo
  19. ↑ http://www.unlikelystories.org/unlikely_books/specialcharacters.shtml
  20. ↑ http://www.blazevox.org/index.php/Shop/Poetry/in-paran-by-larissa-shmailo-154/
  21. ↑ http://www.thelostbookshelf.com/s.html#Larissa%20Shmailo,
  22. ↑ http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/FIB%20SEQUENCE.pdf.
  23. ↑ http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/LarissaShmailo.
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