Vera Pavlova and Xènia Dyakonova

Vera Pavlova is considered one of the most influential voices in Russian poetry. The appearance of her first books triggered reactions as strong as they were opposite: surprise and admiration, but also arrogance, denial and rejection. With an extensive oeuvre translated into more than twenty languages, the originality of her books lies not only in the subjects she deals with freely, such as love, sex and female physiology, but also in the way she presents them: she talks about everything as if it were the first time, searching for the right words to describe it, but never forgetting what she has said before.

A banda i banda del petó (El gall editor, 2018), Pavlova's first work translated into Catalan, won Xenia Dyakonova the 3rd PEN Català Translation Prize. In this talk, the authors will discuss their master-apprentice relationship and how Pavlova's work has influenced Dyakonova's literature, both in Catalan and Russian.