"The poet must be deeply unhappy and even moderately crippled"

MOSCOW. Publishing house "New Literary Review" has released a collection of selected prose of the writer and photographer Boris Kudryakov.

Gran Boris, a philosopher from photography, the mysterious leader of the St. Petersburg literary avant-garde was awarded the first full-fledged publication 12 years after his death. During his lifetime - several small collections: A Shot Glass of Lead (1990), Dashing Horror and The Eleventh Dimension (2003). Before perestroika, the freethinking son of the repressed could only count on publications in Samizdat magazines - Hours, Leprozory-23, Obvodny Canal. Work in the boiler room, odd jobs - a familiar story for the informal geniuses of St. Petersburg. The writer and critic Mikhail Berg classifies him as a category of authors from the world of the Looking Glass, whose precious gift to the mass reader is not easy to evaluate. To a greater extent, his stunning, absurd, multi-layered texts are a joy for creative people who write, readily accepting the concept of l’art pour l’art (“art for art’s sake”).

The book “Rook of Dark Wanderings” includes not only poetry, prose and plays - “Everest”, “Door”, “Ahead of the Earth”, but also Kudryakov’s diary. The collection is illustrated with photographs and drawings, which were repeatedly exhibited in the West and received prizes there. The solo exhibition in Paris in 1981 was called "The World of Dostoevsky" - non-parade Leningrad, slums, poor roads, gloomy faces. Since the late 90s, thanks to exhibitions in the Borey Gallery, the Center for Contemporary Art, the Anna Akhmatova Museum, and the Art College gallery, Kudryakov’s work also became familiar with his native city.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru