ACCLAIMED RUSSIAN poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko will give a reading in Co Cork later this week as part of this year’s Féile na Bealtaine.
Yevtushenko was born in Siberia in 1933. He came to prominence with the publication in 1956 of his poem Zima Station, which documents his own and Russia’s search for reassessment following the disclosure of Stalin’s crimes.
Yevtushenko's most famous poem, Babi Yar, was published in 1961. It denounced the Soviet distortion of historical fact regarding the Nazi massacre of an estimated 34,000 Ukrainian Jews in September 1941 as well as the anti-Semitism then widespread in the Soviet Union.
Yevtushenko, who teaches poetry at Tulsa University in Oklahoma in the US, will give a reading in Youghal on Sunday – a day after his son, Sasha, gets married in the east Cork town.
Dingle poet Dr Michael Fanning said Yevtushenko was “a wonderful reader”. “He’s got a great tenor voice and he reads with great gusto,” Dr Fanning added.
Yevtushenko will read at the Mall Arts Centre at the Town Hall, Youghal, at 4.30pm on Sunday with music provided by John Lynch, principal viola player with the National Symphony Orchestra, and cellist Jane Hughes.
