Holy Winter 20/21

A deeply moving poem about winter and exile, war and the pandemic from “Russia’s greatest living poet” (Poetry) and the acclaimed author of In Memory of Memory

The outbreak of Covid-19 cut short Maria Stepanova’s 2020 stay in Cambridge. Back in Russia, she spent the ensuing months in a state of torpor—the world had withdrawn from her, time had “gone numb.” When she awoke from this state, she began to read Ovid, and the shock of the pandemic dissolved into the voices and metaphors of a transf...