The opening epigraphs are from The Life of Mayakovsky by Wiktor Woroszylski, trans. Boleslaw Taborski, (New York:Orion Press, 1970) and Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2009).
‘Not an Easy Thing for Ilych’ incorporates found text from The Life and Death of Lenin by Robert Payne (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1964); ‘Beryoza, or Single Circle’ quotes and adapts from page 172; the quote ‘organization of professional revolutionaries’ is Lenin’s and was made during the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party in London, 1903. ‘Theory and Practice’ quotes from Payne, page 575; ‘Lenin’s Telephones’ is a found poem made from text at page 472; the quote in ‘Onion Domes’ is from The Life and Death at page 640. Payne, a prolific biographer, was interested in art and revolution.
The poem ‘Birch’ was found in a dance class led by Sarah Chase in 2009.
‘Sharp-Tranquil’ borrows its title from a painting by Kandinsky.
The line ‘can you describe this?’ is from ‘Instead of a Preface’ by Anna Akhmatova.
Marx in ‘The Biographer’ is supplied by The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker, (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2nd ed., 1978). Kandinsky’s remarks on colour are found in Concerning the Spiritual in Art (online).
The poem ‘nikolai gumilev (1886–1921)’ is dedicated to the memory of Nikolai Gumilev (also Gumilyov), a co-founder of the Acmeist movement. Former husband to Anna Akhmatova, he was killed under Lenin in 1921.
Some of these poems first appeared in The Fiddlehead, PRISM International, Vallum: New International Poetics and The Enpipe Line: 70,000+ kilometres of poetry written in resistance to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines proposal. Grateful acknowledgement to their editors. Receipt of an Adele Wiseman Scholarship and a Canada Council for the Arts Travel Grant enabled completion of this book.
I am grateful for the generous artistic support of Elena E. Johnson, Lisa McInnes, Karen Green, April Martin, Jen Currin, Samantha Sternberg, Jenny Jaeckel, Jessica Michalofsky, R. and Jill Fraser. Thanks to Alsu Gortcheva for her assistance with the Russian translations. Thanks to Marina Sonkina and Darja Povidailo. Gratitude to Erín Moure. And thanks to John Barton, Carolyn Forché, Anne Simpson, Jan Zwicky and the participants and staff at Sage Hill in 2008 and 2009 and the Banff Centre in 2011 where some of these poems were first shared. This book could not have been written without the support of my family. Thank you, Jeff.
Thanks to Kevin Connolly for mobilizing this project with his insightful edits. Thanks to Alana Wilcox, Evan Munday, Leigh Nash and everyone at Coach House involved with the production of this book.